Coach/Counselor/Pastor to Clear River/Worship. Word. Table./ Husband, Dad, Poppa./ Running the race, learning endurance. James 1: 2-5 = life verses.
Manassas, Va.
Joined March 2008
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"He is not ashamed to call them his children." (Hebrews 2:11)
Let that sink in: Jesus knows EVERYTHING about you—every struggle, every failure, every weakness—and He is NOT ASHAMED of you. You belong to Him. #BelovedOfGod #UnashamedIdentity #AdoptedByGrace
My heart needed this today.
When Yahweh restores Zion, He promises to delete her shameful memory: “the shame of your youth you will forget” and “the reproach of your widowhood you will not remember.”
She was shamed by her early infidelities, she was reproached because of her Husband’s departure/death. Both of these she will forget.
The waters that Yahweh promises (55:1) might as well be from the river of Lethe. In the joy of reunion with her Husband, Zion forgets all prior shame and pain of her adulteries and her abandonment.
Jeff Ling retweeted
Hey, I love me a Raphael as much as the next guy, but these little ones have done more damage to Christianity than Richard Dawkins.
Jeff Ling retweeted
To lose your sense of humor is to lose your sense of proportion. And nothing is more important in theology than a sense of proportion.
So good. It’s hard to enjoy X when believers keep lobbing grenades at each other.
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I support the death penalty. God himself told Noah that those who willfully take the life of another should be executed.
The United States Army prohibits public executions, but the Pentagon does not seem to care about following its own rules.
The pagan Roman Empire relished the public spectacle of executions. Growing up overseas in an Islamic country, some executions were public. Christendom, over time, recognized that justice is not to entertain or titillate. Justice is not meant to be a spectacle.
In Ezekiel 33:11, scripture reads, “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.” Proverbs 24:17 echoes that for us. “Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice.”
In Chapter 19 of De Spectaculis, Tertullian, one of the early post-apostolic church fathers, wrote about the public spectacle of executions in Rome. “It is good, no doubt, to have the guilty punished. Who but the criminal himself will deny that? And yet the innocent can find no pleasure in another's sufferings: he rather mourns that a brother has sinned so heinously as to need a punishment so dreadful,” he wrote.
In Confessions, Augustine wrote of his friend Alypius, who, dragged into the Coliseum to see gladiatorial fights, shut his eyes, though not his ears. Upon the cheers of slaughter, he opened his eyes to the blood, and the bloodlust corrupted him. Augustine’s writing has long taught Christians not to be entertained by the spectacle of violence, as watching it can damage you.
I support the death penalty. Public executions are soul-twisting and we should not go down that road.
A measure of spiritual maturity is when we ask less for Jesus to still the storm and more for us to be able to stand with him in it. Good on ya Pete.
Jeff Ling retweeted
Note: not saying a church should always be politically moderate. Given the cultural moment, it may find itself more on one side or the other. But if it has no enemies on the left--or right--that's a bad sign. In fact, it's probably an apostate church.
Andrew Osenga dropped his new album today and it’s absolutely lovely.
open.spotify.com/album/2aUz0…
Jeff Ling retweeted
“If the problem in the 16th century was abusing the sacraments through superstition, the problem today for many Protestants is abusing them through neglect and faithless participation.”
—@AdrielTweets
🎥 Watch the full episode: youtu.be/TM_DlFf1hj4
But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, --Titus 3:4-6
Jeff Ling retweeted
When exactly did Jesus show up? When did he step onto the world stage?
When he was born in Bethlehem? That is when “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), but his conception and birth were far from the beginning of his biography.
Was Jesus active as far back as the days of Israel in the Old Testament? Yes. Paul tells us that the Israelites in the wilderness “drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4). Isaiah saw his glory (Isa. 6 and John 12:41). And Jesus was the divine messenger sent by the Father to lead the children of Israel to the Promised Land (Exod. 23:20–23; Jude 5).
But Jesus was around much earlier than Israel and the prophets.
What about the time of Abraham? Jesus told his opponents, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). Before the patriarch existed, Jesus existed. Indeed, he speaks in the present tense: “I am.”
What about creation? John tells us that the Word “was in the beginning with God” and that “all things were made through him” (John 1:2–3). Paul says, “by him all things were created” and “all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16).
So, if all things were created through the Son of God, his biography predates creation.
As we read today in Bible in One Year, on the night before his crucifixion, Jesus prayed, “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:5). Before the world existed!
Jesus, the Son of God, was God before his incarnation, before Israel, before Abraham, and even before creation.
So when did Jesus show up? He didn’t. His bio has no beginning.
There never was a time when the Son of God did not exist. Before Israel, before Abraham, before creation, before there was a before or after, before time itself, the Son of God eternally existed with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Jesus never stepped onto the world stage.
He made the stage.
He is “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made.”
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For an excellent resource on this, see Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ by Robert M. Bowman Jr. and J. Ed Komoszewski, a.co/d/0bF3E9oz
Jeff Ling retweeted
“The definition of spiritual growth is going from having a thin skin and a hard heart to having a thick skin and a soft heart.”
- John Stott
Jeff Ling retweeted
As often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, Paul says, we proclaim Christ’s death until He comes. What is it we proclaim?
We might think we proclaim Jesus’ gruesome suffering. But this turns from Eucharist into eulogy, the table into a tomb.
What we proclaim is a coronation: Jesus’ kingly self-gift and ascent to His cruciform throne. We proclaim God’s ironic inversion of all human plots.
Jeff Ling retweeted
In Genesis 3 we see God asking 3 important questions. I like to think of this as the first therapy session in the history of mankind. The more I meditate on this passage the more I see my own story and the story and experience of every person I counsel.
When God called out, “Where are you?” it was to get to Adam’s heart. It was the voice of law reaching Adam’s conscience - exposing what he was trying so hard to hide.
God already saw everything. “Nothing is hidden from His sight” (Hebrews 4:13). But He spoke in a way Adam could feel - to open his fearful, hiding heart. It was as if God were saying, “Do you really think I can’t see you?” Where is your heart that you would hide from me?”
Sin always makes us want to run from God. It convinces us that distance is safer than drawing near. But the tragedy is that we can’t actually flee from Him and even if we could, running never brings relief. Hiding from God only deepens our misery. We try to escape from the only One who can heal us.
In that moment, God’s question wasn’t just merciful confrontation; it was gospel invitation. He calls us and invites us to confession and repentance and gives us Christ. His law exposes that so in His grace He can cover us.
