I’m all for young people dreaming big dreams. Go out and change the world. Make a difference. Discover a cure for cancer. Write a best-selling novel. Become president. But remember, your “glory” (and mine) will not last. Your great accomplishments will fall away–either in your lifetime, or in a generation, or at the end of all things.

No one will care about your GPA and SAT scores in ten years. If you win a state championship, you’ll be forgotten the next year you don’t. Your beauty will get wrinkles and trim figure plump. Write a great book and it will gather dust in a library some day. Have a big famous church, it won’t last forever. Be an important person in your field, you still be unknown to over 6 billion people in the world. Build an amazing house, it will crumble some day, if it doesn’t go into foreclosure first. All of our achievements and successes are destined to be like dead grass and faded flowers.

But…the word of our God stands forever.

More here from Kevin DeYoung

I’ve heard some older married couples say they love each more now than when they were married. They say it’s because of the shared history but also because they love with more knowledge of the one that they love and that increases love all the more. Yet when I try to think about this in terms of God and his people – say me for example – I run into trouble.

As Daniel has been reflecting:

Consider the throwaway comment of the Apostle Paul in Galatians 4:9:

But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God…

The description that Paul gives of becoming a Christian has two sides to it – coming to know God, and coming to be known by God. They are the two sides of a personal relationship. The ‘knowing’ here is not an epistemic term, but a relational one. This is therefore a question of revelation – as any personal relationship is. I cannot force you to relate to me, nor can I decide by myself the depth of our relationship: that is decided by the extent to which we reveal ourselves to one another. Similarly here.

But this relationship, for all its genuine two-sidedness, is not symmetrical. The “or rather” is significant. It doesn’t undo the first clause, but it does relativise it. Your coming to know God happens in the context of God’s coming to know you. His action is decisive in a way that yours is not. He reveals himself – opens himself to personal relationship – in your direction, and you respond. Numerous other Biblical passages, in Old and New Testaments, paint the same picture.

What does this mean for the connection between love and knowledge? These are thoughts in process but I think it means:

• The Cross of Christ is the place where we are known, as Christ, the Word become flesh in the incarnation, goes further and identifies with sinners and becomes sin, as, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”. In uniting us with Christ, we are known by God and come to know him; it is the basis of shared history as our story is eternally linked with his death and resurrection.
• The Cross of Christ is also the definition and demonstration of the God’s unfailingly complete love. Yet, love without knowledge is deficient. What, after all, is being loved?
  
• However, the place where we are most known by God as fallen creatures made in God’s image is the place of the ultimate demonstration of divine love.
• Love and knowledge for the Christian are bound together and seen most clearly together in the Cross of Christ.
  

I’ve really appreciated these people and just in the last weekend listened to some of their speaking. I’ve selected some quotations which are not even necessarily the main points or the most important but hopefully will whet your appetite for more! They are all, to my mind, well worth listening too.

Lessie Newbigin speaking on Nihilism (h/t Glen)

The critical faculty can only operate on the basis of beliefs which are held uncritically. When someone criticises a position, a proposition, one has always to ask, ‘what are the assumptions which are not criticised when that critical move is made?’…

…if one takes the denial of the resurrection, again you have to ask, what is it that is not being doubted when you say, ‘I cannot believe in the resurrection’. What is not being doubted is a certain view of the world as a closed system of cause and effect which is a total explanation of the world. Now that whole conception of the world has been and can be very radically called into question. When a theologian says ‘I can’t believe in the resurrection’ you have to ask, ‘what are the things that he does believe in which make it impossible for him to believe in the resurrection and what are the grounds for those beliefs?’

Michael Ramsden speaking a different sermon from the one I’ve heard before on 1 Peter 3:13-22 entitled, Do you really love him?

Ravi Zacharias was asked, “The Apostle Paul said he became all things to all men. What do you think he meant by this?”.

He answered, well that’s a good question. There are four parts to communication: persuasion, justification, translation, identification. Identification – when you identify and correctly understand what the person is saying otherwise they think you haven’t even answered their question. Translation – when you communicate using their language so that they can understand what you’re saying. You don’t use big words that confuse them. Persuasion – because if what you say isn’t persuasive people won’t even bother to listen to you. Justification – when you demonstrate that what you’ve ultimately said is right rather than wrong.

Paul was a communicator. The Jews often thought in terms of light and the great light that shone down from heaven to illuminate the path and show us the way. The Romans often thought in terms of glory and the glory of the Roman empire and the eternal city of Rome. The Greeks in particular loved the idea of knowledge and their Greek philosophers and those philosophers that came before them. So you have these different groups thinking in terms of light, knowledge and glory. In 2 Corinthians 4:6 Paul said that God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Simon Ponsonby speaking on the Gift-Giving God

(Speaking about 1 Corinthians 12:1-2) When you were pagans you were led astray but mute idols but now we follow God, we follow the speaking God. He speaks pre-eminently through the Son, He speaks pre-eminently through Scripture, He speaks through creation, He speaks through culture, He speaks through our consciencse but he also speaks to us through charismatic gifts…

…Rachel Hickson, had been preaching on Mother’s Day in America. Sometime later she received a letter which went like this: Dear Rachel, you don’t know who I am but a year ago you preached in my church and it was Mother’s Day and this is my situation. I can’t have children, I’m infertile and now we’re in our 40s, IVF hasn’t worked. We’ve been praying that God would work a miracle. We needed a miracle giving us two children in one, because I was too old to go through one pregnancy and then another preganancy. The other thing is my husband is black and I’m white so we used to pray to God that he would give us zebras. You don’t know this but I was out of the meetin in the toilet and my friend came out and said Rachel is going to pray for women who can’t have children. I went forward without any faith but you walked up to me and said, “Today God is giving you two zebras”. Here is a photograph at the bottom of the letter of my two children born nine months later, my twins.

Came across this story on facebook group dedicated to Actor Network Theory. Let’s not even ask why I was looking at the page but found this quite humorous…

The comedian David O’Doherty tells a story about his brother Mark Doherty, buying a computer. Until a few years ago Mark Doherty was a stand-up too, and like many others he supplemented his income by doing voice-overs. Knowing nothing about computers, he put the introductory CD into the machine. A helpful voice began to guide him through installation. It was his voice. He had recorded the voice-over a year before, and now a guy who knew nothing about computers was listening to himself telling him how to do it.

I woke up this morning with my head at the other end of the bed, still under my covers and with my feet on my pillows. Not only was it bizarrely disorienting waking up with a different view of my bedroom it also took me a while to process how I got there.

I’m left with a couple of questions. Is this unusual? Has the ever happened to you?

The pyros have profiled a cheeky Emergent Flowchart. Problem is of course flow charts are so modernist, must be Plato’s fault or maybe Descartes. I’m fairly sure Luther used them anway…

I love Wimbledon. For a start, the place is my home town. The tennis is pretty great too!

It’s one of the sports that I really enjoy watching on the television and I have done my queuing every now and then to get a ground pass ticket to see the games being played on the outer courts.

The other interest that it holds for me this year is that my sister is working there. It’s not for the first time either as in 2003 and 2004 she was a ball girl there. I got to learn about what you have to do and I have to say it changes the TV coverage quite a bit when you’re annoyed that they are showing the players too much and that there’s not enough of the ball boys and girls! She even wrote a report for CBBC.

Great stuff. Strawberries and cream anyone? Go Murray!

You’re in Durham, exams have finished but students are required to stay around in Durham for a further three weeks with no planned activities. As a church what might you do?

The 17th – 21st July saw 120 students, many residents, some youth doing people’s gardens, painting garages, face-painting, giving away teas and coffees, doing sports, entertaining people on the street, praying for healing and telling people about Jesus!

Here’s a flavour:

It was so exciting to see many students step out and see God act, growing in faith and seeing people respond to the good news about Jesus Christ. It was also quite amazing to see how differently people did that, through conversations, prayer, preaching, drama, singing, acts of services with the opportunity to hold out the Word of God. In Durham, many shops have closed down recently and King’s Church were able to take one over for the week and transform it into an Art gallery filled with work by the church on a particular theme. Members of the church were on hand to chat with people, explain the artwork and to pray, as there was need.

With Paul, we wanted to be able to say:

Therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done— by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit.

Praise God for all his has done!

Update: June Project made the news apparently with the Northern Echo (who even advertised the guest service!) and the BBC covering bits and pieces.

This morning as we worshipped we sang a song written by King’s Church’s very own Chris Juby. Like Ben, I think it’s great!

Here are the lyrics (see also some notes from Chris) and a rough version of the audio:

In the silence of beginning
Spoke the love prepared to pay
So the wellspring of creation
Was the Lamb, eternal, slain.
In the glory of the Godhead
As the universe was made
Was the promise of redemption
In the Lamb, eternal, slain.

From the blood of righteous Abel
As the world gave way to hate
Every sin cried out for vengeance
For the Lamb, eternal, slain.
By the code of temple worship
Sacrifice of blood was made
In that sacrifice, the shadow
Of the Lamb, eternal, slain.

On the cross, in desolation
As he bore our sins away
Hear his prayer “Father, forgive them”
See the Lamb, eternal, slain.
Through his blood we have forgiveness
For he died to take our place
Death itself has been defeated
By the Lamb, eternal, slain.

Now alive in risen glory
Though the wounds of love remain
Holding out the Father’s mercy
Know the Lamb, eternal, slain.
When that final kingdom trumpet
Heralds his triumphant reign
We will worship him forever
Hail the Lamb, eternal, slain.

Here in a more Web 2.0 (or is that 3.0?) form is what I was writing about on the topic of Globality:

(H/T Dave Bish)