For those who do not know, Gina, Calvin, and I have officially resigned here at Ignite.  We are accepting a call to Brainard Avenue Baptist Church in Chicago, IL.  There I will serve as the Associate Pastor of Discipleship and Student Ministries. 

It is both an exciting time and a sad time.  Exciting and sad for the same reason.  We are leaving Lexington and headed to a place where we will enter into an environment void of past friendship and family ties.  It will truly be an adventure.  We are sad to leave friends, family, and the church.  We have enjoyed being part of Ignite and the larger Porter family for a number of years.  We met here!  We were discipled here.  And have had the opportunity to serve on staff here.  The Lord has truly blessed us through this church.

It is exciting, however, to follow the leading of our God to a new place.  We have increased responsibilities and roles.  We will have the chance to invest in new people in a new context.  This place will stretch us and help us to grow spiritually and pastorally…which is probably the same thing.

We ask for your prayers as we move over the next couple of weeks.  Pray for us as we enter into a new place of ministry and do some new things.  We will miss this place, but look forward to that great reunion in the sky when Christ returns.

With all that said, I will continue to blog.  Waging War Daily will  be the place to read my thoughts as well as many others.  Check it out!  Thanks to all who have been supportive over the years, and to those who weren’t (you helped me grow).  God has been so good.

This post is taken from Tim Challies blog.  The writer of the portion below is written by J.C Ryle.

[Dislike of dogma] is an epidemic which is just now doing great harm, and specially among young people…. It produces what I must venture to call…a “jelly-fish” Christianity in the land: that is, a Christianity without bone, or muscle, or power. A jelly-fish…is a pretty and graceful object when it floats in the sea, contracting and expanding like a little, delicate, transparent umbrella. Yet the same jelly-fish, when cast on the shore, is a mere helpless lump, without capacity for movement, self-defense, or self-preservation. Alas! It is a vivid type of much of the religion of this day, of which the leading principle is, “No dogma, no distinct tenets, no positive doctrine.” We have hundreds of “jelly-fish” clergymen, who seem not to have a single bone in their body of divinity. They have not definite opinions; they belong to no school or party; they are so afraid of “extreme views” that they have no views at all. We have thousands of “jelly-fish” sermons preached every year, sermons without an edge, or a point, or a corner, smooth as billiard balls, awakening no sinner, and edifying no saint. We have Legions of “jelly-fish” young men annually turned out from our Universities, armed with a few scraps of second-hand philosophy, who think it a mark of cleverness and intellect to have no decided opinions about anything in religion, and to be utterly unable to make up their minds as to what is Christian truth. They live apparently in a state of suspense, like Mohamet’s fabled coffin, hanging between heaven and earth…and last, and worst of all, we have myriads of “jelly-fish” worshippers-respectable Church-going people, who have no distinct and definite views about any point in theology. They cannot discern things that differ, any more than color-blind people can distinguish colors. They think everybody is right and nobody wrong, everything is true and nothing is false, all sermons are good and none are bad, every clergyman is sound and no clergyman is unsound. They are “tossed to and fro, like children, by every wind of doctrine”; often carried away by any new excitement and sensational movement; ever ready for new things, because they have no firm grasp on the old; and utterly unable to “render a reason of the hope that is in them.” …Never was it so important for laymen to hold systematic views of truth, and for ordained ministers to “enunciate dogma” very clearly and distinctly in their teaching.

This is a great post!  One that college students ( and adults) will do well to think through.  We have turned finding God’s will into some type of mystical activity.  We rely on our “feelings!”  We say things like “God is leading me to another church.”  You will hear this one repeatedly in the context of our church hopping society.  God is “leading” you to leave your church?  Really?  Why?  The answers that follow those questions are usually vague and rooted in pragmatism rather than in the truth of God’s Word.

We must remember that our “feelings” and “emotions” are tainted by sin.  Our hearts are “deceitful” and will lead us astray.  We must root our choices in more that “feelings” that change like Billy Gillispie’s substitution patterns!

Read the Post HERE.

From Desiring God….

How should teenagers handle relationships with the opposite sex? I think that it is good to postpone dating and pairing off as long as possible. Meaning, postpone it until it’s ready to mean what it was designed to mean. Pairing off is a powerful thing. If the relationship here means groups of 4, 8, or 20 people doing stuff together without the dynamic of “she and I are a thing,” you know, that’s great. But this question is talking about pairing off. Pairing off is hormonally charged, psychologically charged, physically charged, spiritually charged, and it is meant to be! It’s meant to lead somewhere! And it’s beautiful where it is meant to lead. Therefore my counsel is that as the electric charge begins to happen between two seventeen-year-olds, they better think really clearly about how to manage that. And if they don’t intend to get married in the next year or so, they better not pair off but keep it in groups and step back from it. To Talitha, my daughter, I say, “Through high school, keep it at groups. And then when the guy shows up, tell him to call me”—that’s one way to manage it—”and we’ll talk about what it should look like.” Long engagements are hard and dangerous. And so I think we should probably marry earlier, if we prepare our children well, or postpone dating till later. Because these long pairs aren’t healthy for any of us.

John Piper

The following post is taken from Baptist 21.  Jon Akin is the Lead Pastor of Highviews’ Valley Station Campus and son of Dr. Daniel Akin, President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

2 CHRONICLES 17-20: JEHOSHAPHAT

Jehoshaphat takes over for his father Asa in a time of turmoil. He strengthens his position in Judah, placing troops in the fortified cities (built by Asa). Yahweh is “with” Jehoshaphat because he walks in the former ways of His father David, who did not seek the Baals. This is a fulfillment of the promises to David (Obedient Son = Blessing, prosperity, etc.). He has riches and honor in great abundance. Jehoshaphat commits himself to God’s Word by sending out princes and Levites city by city to teach the Word of God. As a result, the fear of the Lord falls on all the surrounding kingdoms, so they don’t make war with Jehoshaphat. They fear the power of Yahweh and His Word. The Philistines and the Arabians bring tribute gifts to Jehoshaphat. We see here “Peace in the Middle East,” as Arabs are bringing gifts to the King of Israel. Just imagine if Bin Laden were to bring camels as gifts to the Prime Minister of Israel.

Jehoshaphat’s great, great grandfather saw this happen during his reign. The nations heard of Solomon’s wisdom, they knew that God was WITH him, so they were afraid (i.e. the God of the Exodus), and they came bringing treasures and gifts. They wanted to learn from Solomon’s wisdom. The nations were recognizing that God had blessed Israel and her king. They wanted to be connected with that blessing. The Queen of Sheba wanted to learn the ways of the Lord. Not only that, the nations realized that Solomon and Israel were so powerful and exalted that they wanted to be on Solomon’s good side, so they brought him gifts.

The prophets prophesy that what happened in Solomon’s reign (and partly in Jehoshaphat’s reign) will happen again in an even greater way in the future. The Prophets tell us that a day is coming when all the nations will stream to Israel. All the nations will bring their gold and their wealth to Israel and ask to walk in the ways of the Lord (Isa. 2:3). The nations’ kings will also recognize the power of Israel’s King and will bring gifts to Him, indeed “all nations shall serve him” (Psa. 72:10-11)! Zechariah 8:23 “In those days ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is WITH you.’” Isaiah 60:1-6 tells of a great light that will rise over Israel, the glory of Yahweh will appear over them, and the nations will come to the light, and they will bring gifts of “gold and frankincense.” Matthew 2 shows a fulfillment of this prophecy, where Magi bring these gifts to the king who has a star over him! But, this story even points forward still to the eschatological fulfillment. Revelation 21:22-26, “The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there).And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it.” What is happening in the reign of Jehoshaphat is only a glimpse, a snapshot, of what will happen when David’s greatest Son rules. The nations recognize the light of Yahweh and His Word that are with Judah, and they fear and bring gifts.

We see this prophecy coming true even now. Jesus came teaching the Word of God city by city. He sent out His disciples two-by-two to teach God’s Word. Then, he sent them (us) out through the Great Commission. They don’t just go out, but they “draw in” the nations to the New Jerusalem, Christ. The nations are being gathered through the teaching of God’s Word, and they are submitting to an Israelite King. They are saying, “Teach us your wisdom. Teach us to walk in your ways, for we have heard that God is WITH YOU.”

Foolishly, Jehoshaphat unequally yokes himself and forms a marriage alliance with Ahab. Ahab also entices Jehoshaphat into battle. Jehoshaphat knows enough to ask of the Lord before going into battle, even when 400 other prophets are saying Yahweh will give victory. Jehoshaphat rightly says “isn’t there a prophet of Yahweh to ask?” Ahab says that there is still 1 man, but he doesn’t like this prophet b/c he always prophesies against Ahab. Ultimately, Micaiah, the prophet of Yahweh, prophesies Ahab’s death in the battle. What is striking is that Jehoshaphat requests a Word from Yahweh, and he ignores it. Though Ahab dies in the battle, Jehoshaphat narrowly escapes. On the way home from the battle against Syria, Jehu the prophet confronts and rebukes Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate Yahweh?… Wrath is upon you.” Jehoshaphat repents and sets up a justice system in Judah based on God’s Word.

In Chapter 20, Moab and Ammon come up against Judah, seeking to drive them out of the land. Jehoshaphat is afraid, but he seeks the Lord (unlike Asa his father) and proclaims a fast. All the cities come to “seek” the Lord for help. Azariah’s prophecy to Asa from chapter 15 is coming true. When Judah seeks Yahweh, He will be found by them. All the people from young to old stand in the temple, and Jehoshaphat prays to Yahweh. He addresses him as God of all the nations who has power no one can stand against. He is also the God of Israel who drove out Canaanites and gave them land as promised to Abraham. His people live there and built a sanctuary for Yahweh. If disaster comes, the people are to stand before Yahweh at the temple and cry out to him, and he will “hear and save.” Jehoshaphat turns the attention of his prayer to their enemies. He says that God told Israel not to touch these peoples when coming into the Land of Promise. Yet, these people want to throw Israel out of the land. Jehoshaphat’s imprecatory prayer is that God will judge these peoples and not hesitate. This prayer points back to Solomon’s dedicatory prayer of the temple. When God’s people are besieged by enemies, they will pray towards the temple, and God will deliver them (cf. Jonah 2). Again, we see Jehoshaphat’s relation to the Word of God. He is taking God at his Word.

A Prophet tells the people that the battle is God’s, and He will fight for Judah. They can just stand and see God’s salvation. The people with Jehoshaphat bow their faces to the ground and worship Yahweh. The next morning when the people start singing praises to Yahweh, he destroys their enemies. Judah gets to the place and all they see is dead bodies, so they plunder them for 3 days.

There is a mention in the Prophet Joel about the “Valley of Jehoshaphat.” Lots of ink is spilt from commentators’ pens discussing WHERE this valley is, as if it were a geographical issue. I believe that the Holy Spirit, through Joel, is pointing back to this event in the reign of Jehoshaphat, and He uses it to point to final judgment on those nations that oppose God! Joel writes in 3:12-13, “Let the nations be wakened, and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; For there I will sit to judge (the name Jehoshaphat literally means, “Ya judges”) all the surrounding nations. Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, go down; For the winepress is full, The vats overflow — For their wickedness is great.” The cry of God’s people, throughout history, is, “how long will you allow your enemies to prosper and your people to suffer?” God answers constantly that it will not be this way forever. The wicked shall not prosper forever. Jehoshaphat’s victory here over the Moabites and the Ammonites foreshadows that Day of the Lord. The people of Jehoshaphat’s day praise Yahweh for the victory, and He gives them rest. Again, the surrounding nations are afraid, b/c they see that Yahweh fights for His people.

Though Jehoshaphat was a good king overall, committed to God’s Word, he was not a perfect king. He unequally yoked himself with the Northern Kingdom. He did not fully obey the Word. His failures, with all of the other kings of Judah, foreshadow the need for a perfect Warrior-King. This King was the Word made flesh. This King sent out his disciples to teach God’s word, city-by-city. This King is seeing the nations being gathered in. Gentile pagans are bowing to this King. This King appeared in human history, and the nations did stand against him. As Luke tells us in Acts 2 and Acts 4, the kings of the earth and the rulers took their stand and were gathered together against Yahweh and his Messiah. Indeed Herod, Pilate, the Gentiles, and even Israel gathered together against Jesus. Gentile armies came to destroy the anointed of God, and the cry came again, “How long Oh Lord? How long will the enemies of God prevail?” The answer came back, “Three days!” As the nations gathered against the Messiah, their own plans to destroy him ended up being their own downfall! As Joel prophesied about that day of the Lord there were signs in the heavens, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, the defeat of the enemies of God, and the exaltation of Israel over her enemies. When the dust settled, one man sat at the right hand of God with all his enemies being put under his feet. The cross, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus is a fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy concerning the Day of the Lord and the Valley of Jehoshaphat. King Jesus has destroyed his enemies and his followers are receiving the spoils. This King will one day appear in the Eastern sky at the sound of the trumpet, with all of His enemies assembled in the valley of Jehoshaphat. A sharp two-edged sword will come out of His mouth to “strike the nations.” He will rule over the nations with a rod of iron, and the nations will stream to the New Jerusalem, bringing Him their honor and glory, saying, “teach us to walk in the ways of the Lord!”

J.A.

Great post by a great leader.  Interesting to say the least.

If Only We Really Were . . .

Writing for National Review Online, Jay Nordlinger recounts a broadcast from Middle East Media Research Institute in which a Muslim cleric from Egypt defends no fault divorce.  What interests me is the last line, which gives Christians more credit than we seem to deserve.  The cleric says:

“What’s the point of having an animal you can ride, if it drives you nuts? The distance it takes you you could cover in a bus for a quarter of an Egyptian pound, but you have to spend 100 pounds on this animal. Sell it, and get rid of it. Would anyone blame you for selling it? Would anyone say: “Shame on him for selling it”? It’s only an animal.

If a man is completely fed up with his apartment, because he has bad neighbors, and the apartment is falling apart, would anyone blame him for selling it and say: “Shame on you, how can you sell it? This is where you were born and raised.” This apartment does not suit him anymore. I have bad neighbors, and I don’t feel good in it.

The same goes for the woman. If a woman has such bad character that her husband does not feel comfortable with her, there is nothing to prevent him from divorcing her. What are we, Christians?!”

From Desiring God and John Piper:

J. Gresham Machen, one of the great proclaimers and defenders of the Christian faith in the early 20th century, went through a season of fearful doubt on his way to solid confidence. Remarkably, it was his mother who spoke one of the decisive words of rescue. He tells the story:

The question is not merely whether we can rest in our faith, but whether we can rest in the doubt that is the necessary alternative of faith. We pass sometimes through periods of very low spiritual vitality. The wonderful gospel which formerly seemed to be so glorious comes to seem almost like an idle tale. Hosts of objections arise in our minds; the whole unseen world recedes in the dim distance, and we think for the moment that we have relinquished the Christian hope….

My mother [spoke to me] in those dark hours when the lamp burned dim, when I thought that faith was gone and shipwreck had been made of my soul. “Christ,” she used to say, “keeps firmer hold on us than we keep on him.”

My mother’s word meant…that salvation by faith does not mean that we are saved because we keep ourselves at every moment in an ideally perfect attitude of confidence in Christ. No, we are saved because having once been united to Christ by faith, we are his forever. Calvinism is a very comforting doctrine indeed. Without its comfort, I think I should have perished long ago in the castle of Giant Despair. (J. Gresham Machen: Selected Shorter Writings, 561)

This is taken from Justin Taylor’s Blog.  If you don’t read him…you should.

From Paul Tripp’s chapter, “War of Words: Getting to the Heart for God’s Sake,” in the forthcoming book, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God:

I would ask you again to be humbly honest with yourself as you are reading. If I sat with you and I listened to recording of the last month of your words, whose kingdom, what kingdom, would I conclude those words are spoken to serve? Would it be the kingdom of self with its self-focused demandingness, expectancy, and entitlement? Would I hear a person who is quick to criticize, quick to judge, quick to slam, and quick to condemn, because people are always violating the laws of your kingdom? Is the greatest moral offense in your life an offense that someone makes against the laws of your kingdom? When this happens do you use words as a punishment or as a weapon? Do you use words to rein this person back into loyal service of the purposes of your kingdom of one?

Or would I hear you using words of love, honestly, encouragement, and service because your heart is taken up with the big-sky purposes of the kingdom of God. The entire law is summarized by a single command. If you had written that, what would you have written next? I probably would have written, “Love God above all else.” But that is clearly not what Paul writes. He writes, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Why is that an adequate summary of all that God calls me to? Oh, it is important to get this truth. It is only when I love God above all else that I will ever love my neighbor as myself. It’s only when God is in the rightful place in my life that I will treat you with the love that I have received from him. Brothers and sisters, hear this. You don’t fix language problems, you don’t fix communication problems, and you don’t fix word problems horizontally first; you first fix them vertically.

This post is taken from the 9Marks blog.  Mark Dever is a tremendously gifted author, pastor, and theologian.  He deserves our attention.

At CHBC we often get comments on our 10 minute pastoral prayers.  These prayers range from the needs of our congregation to praying for leaders in government and society to praying for other churches, and those who have gone out from us to praying for a number of different countries around the world, pressing problems they’re facing, and the growth of the gospel in these lands, and then praying for the character of Christians in America and for God to bless the preaching of His Word in specific ways in our congregation this morning. 

I regret to say that apparently this kind of pastoral prayer is unusual in churches today.

A few years ago, I remember reading a quotation by John Stott (no primary source was cited, but I’m pretty sure it was an article in CT) that expresses exactly our concern to lead the congregation in such prayers.

“I remember some years ago visiting a church incognito.  I sat in the back row.  I wonder who’s in the back row tonight.  You know they often slip in there incognito.  I’m not going to tell you the church.  You won’t be able to identify it; it’s thousands of miles away from here.  When we came to the pastoral prayer, it was led by a lay brother, because the pastor was on holiday.  So he prayed that the pastor might have a good holiday.  Well, that’s fine.  Pastors should have good holidays.  Second, he prayed for a lady member of the church who was about to give birth to a child that she might have a safe delivery, which is fine.  Third, he prayed for another lady who was sick, and then it was over.  That’s all there was.  It took twenty seconds.  I said to myself, it’s a village church with a village God.  They have no interest in the world outside.  There was no thinking about the poor, the oppressed, the refugees, the places of violence, world evangelization . . . .”

Pastor, spend some time preparing your pastoral prayer.  Glorify God.  Present Him as the great God that He is.  Don’t by your prayers, make Him seem as if He is merely a village god.

I wanted to take this milestone post and point you to a blog that I have started recently. It is a blog that is meant to engage the intellect and call Christians to use their minds like never before. The contributors are Jamie Woodyard, Justin Sok, Kenneth Bruce, Todd Burus, Nick Cooper, and myself. I will probably add contributors as time goes on.

Check it out. Remember, it is meant to stimulate theological discussion and reflection as we engage this confused culture.

Waging War Daily