If God is so powerful and so good, why does bad stuff happen? Voddie Baucham

If this is your question then you don't understand the issue.

9/11 and My Sin

I remember exactly where I was on September 11th 2001. I was working in Rhourd El Baguel, Algeria when a friend came to my office to tell me that an airplane had just flown into one of the twin towers in New York City. The thought of such a thing was beyond belief but it was true. Every year since I think about that day, my thoughts, fears and a hatred I had for people who would do such an evil thing.

A thought comes to mind as we get close to 9/11. When I recall the events of that day and the days afterward, I think that the evil acts of that day are no different than the evil that I commit when I sin against a holy, holy, holy God. What I saw on 9/11 gives me a glimpse of what my own sin is like. It’s evil and it’s against the one who gives me life and who has provided for me, though his Son, forgiveness of my sin. What Jesus bore on the cross was my sin, my very own sin and He died as a once for all time sacrifice so that I can know forgiveness.

Romans 12:9 says “Abhor what is evil”. The word “Abhor” means to despise, to hate bitterly. It expresses a strong feeling of horror and contains the idea of separation.

Sin is not cute or funny or to be lightly regarded or excused. Sin is despicable and deadly, and God’s instructions to His people go past that of not sinning ourselves, but commands us to detest, loathe and hate sin. It is not to be tolerated or danced around or chucked under the chin, as would a mother pet a favored child. For sin is insidious and to be greatly feared. Make no mistake, sin is evil.

Do we see our sin properly?

Do we see our sin the same way God sees our sin?

Take this 9/11 to consider your sin and what it really is and how you should really feel about it.

Father, help me to feel the same way about my sin as I felt about the evil I saw on 9/11/2001. Father, help me to see my sin the same way as you see my sin. Amen.

Yet I Sin

Eternal Father,
Thou are good beyond all thought,
But I am vile, wretched, miserable, blind;
My lips are ready to confess, but my heart is slow to feel, and my ways reluctant to amend.
I bring my soul to thee; break it, wound it, bend it, mould it.
Unmask to me sin's deformity, that I may hate it, abhor it, flee from it.
My faculties have been a weapon of revolt against thee; as a rebel I have misused my strength, and served the foul adversary of they kingdom.
Give me grace to bewail my insensate folly,
Grant me to know that the way of transgressors is hard, that evil paths are wretched paths, that to depart from thee is to lose all good.
I have seen the purity and beauty of they perfect law, the happiness of those in whose heart it reigns, the calm dignity of the walk to which it calls, yet I daily violate and contemn its precepts.
Thy loving Spirit strives within me, brings me Scripture warnings, speaks in startling providences, allures by secret whispers, yet I choose devices and desires to my own hurt, impiously resent, grieve, and provoke him to abandon me.
All these sins I mourn, lament, and for them cry pardon.
Work in me more profound and abiding repentance;
Give me the fullness of a godly grief that trembles and fears, yet ever trusts and loves, which is ever powerful, and ever confident;
Grant that through the tears of repentance I may see more clearly the brightness and glories of the saving cross.

The Valley of Vision

Prayer by C. H. Spurgeon December 30, 1877:

"Lord, there are so many today who are running away from the truth. Oh, that You would be pleased to speak by Your Spirit that Your word may be known. Lord, hold us fast to the truth of Your word, bind us to it. May we not be ashamed of the truth of Your word but proclaim it boldly without compromise. May we not wish to be thought cultured, nor aim to keep in step with the times. May we be side by side with You, O bleeding Savior; and be content to be rejected, be willing to take up unpopular truth, and to hold fast despised teachings of sacred Scripture to the end.
Oh make us faithful unto death."

John Bunyan - Scripture Memory - Pilgrim's Progress - John Piper

Three times Bunyan says that the key was in Christians "chest pocket" or simply his "chest." I take this to mean that Christian had hidden it in his heart by memorization and that it was now accessible in prison for precisely this reason. This is how the promises sustained and strengthened Bunyan. He was filled with Scripture. Everything he wrote was saturated with Bible. He poured over his English Bible, which he had most of the time. This is why he can say of his writings, "I have not for these things fished in other men's waters; my Bible and Concordance are my only library in my writings." Charles Spurgeon put it like this: "He had studied our Authorized Version . . . till his whole being was saturated with Scripture; and though his writings . . . continually make us feel and say, 'Why, this man is a living Bible!' Prick him anywhere; and you will find that his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak with out quoting a text, for his soul is full of the Word of God."

Bunyan reverenced the Word of God and trembled at the prospect of dishonoring it. "Let me die . . . with the Philistines (Judg. 16:30) rather than deal corruptly with the blessed word of God." This, in the end, is why Bunyan is still with us today rather than disappearing into the mist of history. He is with us and ministering to us because he reverenced the Word of God and was so permeated by it that his blood is "Bibline" and that "the essence of the Bible flows from him."

Jimmy Finds Real Life - Part 2

Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound - Romans 5:20

Jimmy Finds Real Life - Rev J. W. Lawless Jr

My sister sent this to me today and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it. The first time I heard my dad preach was on skid row in downtown Ft Worth. The first time I handed out a tract was with my dad while he preached open air. My dad was attending seminary preparing for the ministry and I was in 2nd grade. After he graduated and took his first church in Central, NM he continued to preach open air but this time it was a family affair. We sang, my dad preached and we passed out tracts. I remember these times like they were yesterday. Below is a story my dad wrote. I will deliver it in 2 parts over the next few days.

Is He just a ticket to heaven or do you truly love Him?

I found the following posted on the Slice of Laodicea blog.

Is Jesus Christ supremely valuable to you? Or is He just a ticket to heaven?

Yet I Sin - Valley of Vision

Eternal Father,

Thou art good beyond all thought,
But I am vile, wretched, miserable, blind;

My lips are ready to confess,
but my heart is slow to feel,
and my ways reluctant to amend.

I bring my soul to thee;
break it, wound it, bend it, mould it.

Unmask to me sin’s deformity,
that I may hate it, abhor it, flee from it.

My faculties have been a weapon of revolt
against thee;
as a rebel I have misused my strength,
and served the foul adversary of thy kingdom.

Give me grace to bewail my insensate folly,
Grant me to know that the way of transgressors
is hard,that evil paths are wretched paths,
that to depart from thee is to lose all good.

I have seen the purity and beauty of thy perfect law,
the happiness of those in whose heart it reigns,
the calm dignity of the walk to which it calls,
yet I daily violate and contemn its precepts.

Thy loving Spirit strives within me,
brings me Scripture warnings,
speaks in startling providences,
allures by secret whispers,
yet I choose devices and desires to my own hurt,
impiously resent, grieve,
and provoke him to abandon me.

All these sins I mourn, lament, and for them
cry pardon.

Work in me more profound and abiding repentance;
Give me the fullness of a godly grief
that trembles and fears,
yet ever trusts and loves,
which is ever powerful, and ever confident;

Grant that through the tears of repentance
I may see more clearly the brightness
and glories of the saving cross.

-Valley of Vision

Baptism Service - Curtis McKnight

Yesterday, Saturday , was a very special day for my family. Curtis, my son-in-law made his public professon of faith and was baptized. Below is his testamony and the video of his baptism.

I considered myself a good person when I was growing up. I have never been to jail. I have never done illegal drugs. I made good grades in school, went to college, have a loving wife. By this worlds standards I am an upstanding citizen. About 3 years ago, my family and I started going to church, and I was invited to a bible study where my eyes were opened little by little to truth about how good I was. God’s word showed me that I am a sinner in a need of a Savior. I have stolen things, no matter how small it is I am still a thief in God’s eyes. I have looked upon another woman with lust and in God’s eyes that is committing adultery. I have lied and taken the Lords name vein. I was headed to one place and that was hell. God has worked on me in the past 3 years through His word and by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is by the Grace of God that I have been given faith and I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. His sacrifice was payment for my transgressions. He is sufficient for all things. Faith has produced repentance and obedience, and today I am filled with joy to profess publicly my faith in Jesus Christ.

SBC Church Sign - Midland, Texas

I saw the following sign on an SBC billboard here in Midland, Texas:

“Jesus died for myspace in heaven”

No!

He was despised and forsaken of men,

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;

He was despised,

We did not esteem Him.

Our griefs He Himself bore,

Our sorrows He carried;

Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,

Smitten of God, and afflicted.

He was pierced through for our transgressions,

He was crushed for our iniquities;

Chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,

By His scourging we are healed.
God has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted,

Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,

By oppression and judgment He was taken away;

He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?

But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief;

He would render Himself as a guilt offering,

He poured out Himself to death,

And was numbered with the transgressors;

Yet He Himself bore the sin of many,

And interceded for the transgressors.

Isaiah53

Jesus died because His sacrifice was the only way that I/you might know forgiveness of our sin, it was the only way we could be justified before God. Friends there is no "MySpace" in heaven without repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

This is the sort of seeker friendly evangelism that will have many believing that they are saved when indeed they are not. They will wake up someday to their eternal shock.

The Need for Sound Discernment…on a Golf Course

From the Slice of Laodicea blog:

When it comes to the importance of warning believers of false teaching, I have often used the analogy of a toddler or preschooler finding a jug of anti-freeze. It looks pretty and blue, sort of like that shocking colored Gatorade or Kool-aid in the refrigerator. It’s the same consistency. It comes packaged in the same kind of plastic container. Why not drink it?

Continue reading here.

The longer you stay away from God... - CH Spurgeon

“The longer you stay away from God, the more deeply you will sin. If you keep on in the wrong path, not only will you have sinned the more, but that sin will have taken a more terrible hold upon you. Habits begin like cobwebs, but they end like chains of iron. A man might more readily have swept away the temptation when it was new to him than he will be able to do when, having yielded to it many a time, the devil has learned the way to master him. May God help you to flee from sin as soon as you perceive it, lest you be caught in its net of steel and be held in it to your
eternal destruction!”—

The disease of sin... - CH Spurgeon

“The disease of sin is everywhere in the realm of manhood and it is all the more certainly proved to be everywhere because so many people cannot see it! This is why you cannot see sin in yourselves—it has made all the various faculties of your soul to mortify so that you cannot feel the pains which this mortal disease would otherwise have caused you. Thus your heart has lost any tenderness that it may have had, naturally, and your conscience is seared as with a hot iron so that it cannot warn you of the mischief within, but prophesies smooth things, while all is in a state of ruin, destruction and dismay—and will be so forever unless God, by His Grace, shall work a miraculous change.”—

They are enemies of the Cross of Christ... - CH Spurgeon

“They are ‘the enemies of the Cross of Christ,’ who try to belittle this great Atonement and to make it out to be a very small affair, next to nothing in importance. As I have often said of some preachers, they teach that Jesus Christ did something or other, which in some way or other, is in some measure or other connected with our salvation. We do not teach any such hazy ideas as that! We say that He laid down His life for the sheep and that for those sheep He has made a perfect, complete and effectual Redemption by which He has delivered them from the wrath to come. Blessed is he who rejoices in that doctrine of the Cross of Christ!”

There is no possibility of converting anybody... - CH Spurgeon

“There is no possibility of converting anybody by persuasion, by logic, by rhetoric, or anything of the sort. It is the work of God, and the work of God, alone! And though He uses instrumentality in almost every case, yet He will not use that instrumentality which thinks itself sufficient for
the work. He will make us know that we are nothing—and then He will make everything of us. He does not mind how much He makes of His servants when all that He does for them brings the more glory to His own name, and they do not, even with their little finger, touch the honor of
it, or wish to do so.”

How about you preacher? - CH Spurgeon

“I have preached the Gospel, now, these 30 years and more, and some of you will scarcely believe it, but in my vestry behind that door, before I come to address the congregation in this Tabernacle, I tremble like an aspen leaf. And often, in coming down to this pulpit, have I felt my knees knock together—not that I am afraid of any one of my hearers—but I am thinking of that account which I must render to God, whether I speak His Word faithfully or not. On this service may hang the eternal destinies of many. O God, grant that we may all realize that this is a matter of the most solemn concern! May we all come to God by Christ Jesus, that everything may be right with us, now, and right for eternity! God grant that it may be!”—

When that great saint and preacher, Augustine, lay dying..... - CH Spurgeon

“When that great saint and preacher, Augustine, lay dying—and I venture to say of Augustine that among all who were born of women, there has hardly ever been a greater than he—his mind was equal to any philosophy for its depth, its length and its breadth. And as an instructor in
theology he still remains, under Christ, next to the Apostle Paul, the master-teacher of the churches—yet, as he lay dying, he asked to have certain texts of Scripture printed in large capitals. Which do you suppose he chose? You may think that he selected some deep and mysterious passage about the high doctrine which he so greatly loved, but he did nothing of the kind. He chose those texts of Scripture which we commonly quote to sinking sinners—such as these—‘He that believes on the Son has everlasting life.’ ‘Whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ And that great saint feasted his dying eyes on the texts which we usually give to babes in Christ’s faith, or those who are seeking the Savior, for they suited him just then!”

The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. It has the power to save you, it has the power to sustain you and it has the power to glorify you. It is God's gospel that we must teach and preach. Anything less will create false converts destined for an eternity in hell.

It will never do for men to be led to think... - CH Spurgeon

“It will never do for men to be led to think that they are healed before they know that they are sick unto death, or to imagine that they are clothed before they see themselves to be naked, or to be taught to trust Christ before they are aware that they have anything for which they have
need to trust Him. It would be a happy circumstance if, in our preaching, we could have a blending of these two elements so that we could have somewhat of our forefathers’ deep experimental teaching and, with it, and growing out of it a plain, unfettered delivery of the Gospel declaration, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved."

The Sovereignty of God - CH Spurgeon

"There is no attribute of God more comforting to His children than the doctrine of divine sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe troubles, they believe that Sovereignty hath ordained their afflictions, that Sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify them all. There is nothing for which the children of God ought more earnestly to contend than the dominion of their Master over all creation---the kingship of God over all the works of His own hands---the throne of God, and His right to sit upon that throne.

On the other hand, there is no doctrine more hated by worldlings, no truth of which they have made such a football, as the great, stupendous, but yet most certain doctrine of the Sovereignty of the infinite Jehovah. Men will allow God to be everywhere except on His throne. They will allow Him to be in His workshop to fashion worlds and to make stars. They will allow Him to be in His almonry to dispense His alms and bestow His bounties. They will allow Him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean; but when God ascends His throne, His creatures then gnash their teeth, and when we proclaim an enthroned God, and His right to do as He wills with His own, to dispose of His creatures as He thinks well, without consulting them in the matter, then it is that we are hissed and execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on His throne is not the God they love. They love Him anywhere better than they do when He sits with His scepter in His hands and His crown upon His head. But it is God upon the throne we love to preach. It is the God upon the throne whom we trust."

-Spurgeon, delivered May 4, 1856 in a sermon titled "Divine Sovereignty"

"Oh you legalist who are looking to yourselves..." CH Spurgeon

“O you legalists who are looking to yourselves for some arguments with which to prevail with God! O you who look to your sacraments, to your outward forms, to your pious deeds and your almsgivings for something that will move the heart of God—know this, that these things are no
lever that can ever move Him to 1ove! Nothing but your sin and misery can ever stir His mercy! And you look to the wrong place when you look to your merits to find a plea why He should show pity upon you!"