Have Patience, Have Patience

A familiar song for kids is the "Have Patience" song. Even as a 32 year-old seminary graduate who is a candidate for the ministry needs to be reminded constantly to be patient! I know that the Lord is in control and that he does have a place for me minister, but I am sinful and tend to get frustrated when things don't move along as quickly as I want them to. Already it has been 2 months since I took my candidacy exam and the Lord has opened up opportunities for me to both fill pulpits and candidate for a call. This will be an interesting time, and one that both my wife and I are excited to jump into!

However, this will be a very busy time and will involve a lot of traveling (which I love to do), but it will also be a blessing to meet the saints in other parts of the continent. Some of the churches I will be traveling to are vacant and looking for a pastor, so for those churches I am looking forward to meeting the people, talking with the elders, and understanding the needs and desires of that particular congregation. The other churches simply need pulpit supply as their pastor is away or on vacation. One of those churches I have been to before, and the other I have not so I am looking forward to meeting that congregation, albeit briefly. But with all of these churches that I will be visiting over the course of a month, I am most looking forward to bringing them God's Word twice each Lord's Day. It is a daunting task to stand in a pulpit and be the mouthpiece of Christ, but yet the Holy Spirit does the work using this weak and sinful vessel.

So keep Michelle and I in your prayers as we will be traveling and visiting churches who are interested in possible calling me to be their pastor. We trust that the Lord will open and close doors according to his will, we just need to be patient!

And we have something more sure

Originally posted on the Gig Harbor Reformed Bible Study Blog:

In today's Christian climate it is thought that one's personal "testimony" is the pinnacle of Christian witness. Doctrine has its place maybe, but being able to tell a person what has happened to you is the ideal way to "convince" somebody to be a Christian. This sort of thinking has been shown to be true on the White Horse Inn program a number of times when the producer will ask Christian leaders questions like "What is better to win somebody to Christ, doctrine or your personal testimony?" Time and time again, the respondents answer back, "Oh, your personal testimony of course. I mean what else do you have? Telling people what actually happened to you personally in becoming a Christian is something people can believe."

The Apostle Peter is an interesting test case here. Peter was the Apostle upon whom Christ said the church will be built. He was one of Christ's closest friends and confidants. Peter even was on the Mount when Christ was transfigured and heard the very voice of God and saw the Glory-cloud of the Spirit. What a testimony!! Peter could have played that card throughout his ministry to the nations after Christ's ascension. In fact in 2 Peter 1, Peter mentions this experience in verses 16-18:

¹⁶ For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. ¹⁷ For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased," ¹⁸ we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.

Now if Peter was a 21st century Evangelical he would have continued with something like: "This is what I saw and experienced and you can't take that away from me. You too should believe in Christ because of these things that I saw and heard. But more than that look at how my life has changed! I used to fish to scrape by a living, but now I fish for men!"

But that is not the path that Peter takes. Look at what he says in verses 19-21 remembering this is Peter talking and after he tells his readers of his wonderful experience on the holy mountain:

¹⁹ And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, ²⁰knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. ²¹ For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Isn't that amazing! Paul immediately points his readers to something more sure than his personal experience--the Holy Scriptures!! These are more sure because they are inspired by the Holy Spirit as the passage goes on to tell us. Peter, even in the first decades of the early church, was pointing people to the Scriptures to prove who Christ was. That is what Peter did in Acts 2 in that first Pentecost sermon, and was still doing for this audience as well.

When it comes to telling others about Christ we have "something more sure" and today we have something even better than Peter had because we have the completed canon containing all the revealed Word of God concerning our redemption in Jesus Christ. Our lives are totally fallible and we can never use ourselves as proof that Christ has secured redemption, but we have the infallible Word of God that through the working of the Holy Spirit people come to a saving knowledge of Christ. Let us use what we have been given and don't make "cleverly devised myths" (1 Pet 1:16) of our own making.

Get your degere online?

Okay. If you were sending out spam mail trying to make it seem legitimate, don't you think you would at least run a spell-checker before you send it out? Here is the first line of such a spam mail I received this morning:

Add Bachleors, Dotcorate or Masetrs Degeres to your resume in just 4-6 weeks and open avenues to promotion and better jobs!

Why did I get my Master's Degree from Westminster, when I could have received my Masetrs Degere from this outfit? I guess there is still time for my Dotcorate. I don't know if I want to take the 4-6 weeks to get it though...

The Need For a Good Liturgy

Having a good liturgy for corporate worship on the Lord's Day is a must! There are certain items (elements) that should be incorporated into every worship service litury so that the people of God can be fully fed, nourished and sustained for the coming week ahead. Of course the preaching of God's Word is primary, but there are other elements in the service that help prepare the people for the preaching, and give them things they can't get any where else.

My wife and I were recently on vacation and on the Sunday morning we went to a church in the area where we were staying. Let's just say, the liturgy was quite lacking, and actually one of the thinnest I have ever seen. I was going to keep the bulletin, but I didn't so I have to go from memory, but here is what it was to the best of my knowledge.

• Welcome


• Singing of 4 or 5 praise songs


• Offering (Children even through high school it seemed left the sanctuary)


• Scripture Reading and Sermon


• Song


• Benediction

Now what was lacking? Right off the bat there was no call to worship from Scripture leading the people into the presence of the Triune God nor a minister giving the greeting of God. The welcome was just that, a welcome. Then the praise team got up and we sang songs for 15-20 minutes. There was an offering, and there might have been a "congregational prayer" of some sort, I forget, but it wasn't anything special bringing the prayers of God's church and people before his throne.

As is mentioned above, pretty much all the children and even young people left at this time to have their own sermon, I guess. It was pretty sad to see kids who could very easily listen to a sermon ushered away from their families and given something else. I am not against nurseries, but this was different. Kids can sing with their parents, but they cannot listen to a sermon together about which they could discuss and talk about later?

I won't say much if anything about the sermon. Let's just say there were a lot of illustrations and he kind of missed the point of the text in my opinion.

After that there was one more song to sing, then the benediction, which given the beginning of the service I was at least glad to see we got God's blessing upon leaving!

What was most apparently missing from the liturgy, if you didn't figure it out already is any sort of reading of the law, confession of sin, and the declaration of forgiveness. I couldn't help but think as I was sitting there if there were any non-Christians in attendance, they got exactly what they would have expected. Everything about the service was cookie-cutter from American Evangelicalism as seen on TV and in the movies. There was no being confronted with a holy God and realizing how unworthy you are to stand in his almighty presence. Oh, this is supposedly a "Reformed" church too. There was nothing Reformed about it, nothing in the least. It was a shame.