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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| His Overlooked Ministry |
Thanks to all the sappy love songs of previous decades gone by, most people think of a broken heart as that sad empty feeling we get when love goes sour, or something we really hoped to have is withheld or even lost to us.
A broken heart, in our culture, is a little red thing with a crack in it on an "I miss you" or a "forgive me" card.
I want you to consider the heart in Luke 6:45 where we read "The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart." [NASB] Here scripture paints the heart as more than the center of emotion; here the heart is the center of our driving desires. A man who desires good things will from those desires draw forth good out of his heart, and a man who desires wickedness will draw forth the same from his heart. No big surprise there, I suppose, as I think we all can see that plainly enough from the text.
Yet I want you to do your best in the next moment to set aside all your Hallmark™ pre-conditioned thought, and consider for a second what it really means to have a broken heart. Not an, "ouch, my emotions hurt" heart, but an, "Something is wrong with my heart" heart. Think past the clichés and think instead that your "heart" is supposed to be producing right desires and right thoughts all the time (not the muscle/blood pump, but the "you" that you are at your core).
How is your ability to love? How about forgiveness? Bitterness? Do you find yourself freely able to forgive others, yet crippled when it comes to gossiping about someone? Or maybe you are deeply empathetic, or even magnanimous, yet you can't seem to fight an underlying bitterness. I am not trying to be provide an exhaustive list of heart conditions - I just want to give some fodder to start the thought-ball rolling.
Is your heart whole and sound, or has sin broken it in some way? Many ways?
Allow me to be transparent for a bit. One of the reasons, I think, I am not ready for pastoral ministry, is because I lack empathy. If I hear that someone I am acquainted with is in the hospital dying, I accept (intellectually) that this is a difficult thing, yet my heart isn't moved to compassion as I believe it should - as I see others do. There seems to be something broken in me, and scripture says it is my heart.
Now, I want to face that head on; there are some things that we could fake - but doing so would be more dishonest to ourselves than to anyone else. It is wise to sit down and take inventory sometimes, to ask God why it is that you are so bitter, so gossipy, so depressed, so angry, so cold - whatever it is - then listen over the days, weeks and months to the rhythm of live God brings you through - listen to His answer as he unravels the knot for you, and perspective comes to you so that whatever your intellectual capacity happens to be, you will begin to note that you are broken, and you may even know or suspect in what way sin has broken what you were supposed to be.
When you are able to "own" the fact that the heart in you has been broken by sin, then there are some verses that may have profound meaning to you. Verses you may have skipped over as poetry or warm fuzzy, but for-all-intents empty. I hope that given this briefest of introductions to the thought, the Lord's Spirit will move to bring these passages to open up your hope in Him.He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. - Psalm 147:3 [NASB]
The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners; - Psalm 61:1 [NASB] I could post more like these, but all I want you to do is know that our God binds up the broken hearted. There is more there than putting a smile on a forlorn face, I think. We serve a God who is in the business of making crooked roads straight, sick bodies well, and wrong hearts right.
If you know yourself and your need, get to know your God, for He is able to do for you, abundantly above all you ask or think in this matter. In fact, the first step down this road, I think, is that God has opened your eyes to see it. That's what we call setting a path beneath your feet. You still have to walk it.
I could be mistaken of course - maybe it is all about feeling nice. But I suspect more.Labels: sanctification |
posted by Daniel @
6:50 AM
 
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| 4 Comments: |
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Just thinking out loud this morning...
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Note: I didn't post on potty language. That's being done to death right now...
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Something very timely about the subject - the depth of the love shown by and through the horror of the Cross - and the beauty that it creates - has been getting a lot of really in-depth attention today - more than usual. I believe that God is up to something.
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I have often wondered the same thing. I know that the problem of sin has been dealt with soundly by the cross, but I still must suffer the effects of it daily, to the point where it wears me out. I need to stop expecting that I'll be perfected on this earth, and learn to lean on Him minute by minute. It's why He saved me, anyway, isn't it?
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Just thinking out loud this morning...