Tim Keller, Mental Health

“Some say that calling yourself a ‘sinner’ is emotionally unhealthy. Oh, no. It is emotionally unhealthy not to call yourself a sinner…To be able to say ‘I am capable of terrible things, but I am unconditionally loved,’ is the epitome of mental health. It is the gospel that gives us that. The gospel gives us the freedom to admit who we are when the information comes, to see where we need to change, to know ourselves.”

-Tim Keller, Did He Die for You?, Journal of Biblical Counseling, Spring 2007

Text & Context

I’m signed up for the Text & Context Conference in Seattle this February. I’ll be connecting with a few friends while I’m there. Anyone else going to the conference?

On Vacation: Kauai for $130

Friends, tomorrow my family and I fly out to Kauai for a week of vacation. Through the recent, generous timeshare gift from my wife’s step dad and the generous air mile gift from a friend, we’ve been given a free vacation. We’ll spend $130 for a rental car and I guess we’ll have to eat too, but otherwise it should be a cheap and wonderful vacation on the island where my wife and I spent our honeymoon in 2003.

Needless to say, I’ll be surfing not blogging this next week. Buzzard Blog is officially on vacation. See you in a week.

U.S. Abortions Drop to Lowest Level Since 1976

From today’s Washington Post:

The number of abortions performed in the United States dropped to 1.2 million in 2005 — the lowest level since 1976, according to a new report.

…The total number of abortions among women ages 15 to 44 declined from 1.3 million in 2000 to 1.2 million in 2005, an 8 percent drop that continued a trend that began in 1990, when the number of abortions peaked at more than 1.6 million, the survey found. The last time the number of abortions was that low was 1976, when slightly fewer than 1.2 million abortions were performed.

That’s great news! Praise God.

But, the bad news:

Suzanne T. Poppema of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health
speculated that wider availability of the morning-after pill also might
be playing a role.

I would like to say that it’s at least partially due to increased
availability of emergency contraception, which is a really good
addition to reproductive health care in this country,” she said. The
emergency contraceptive known as Plan B, a high dose of standard birth
control pills, can prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of
unprotected sex.

…the long decline in the number of abortion providers appears to be
stabilizing, partly a result of the availability of the French abortion
pill RU-486, the report found, because some physicians who do not
perform surgical abortions provide it to their patients.

John Piper, Advice to Pastors: How to Help Your People Be More Satisfied in God

Here’s some extremely helpful advice that John Piper gave to pastors in February 1996:

1. Love God will all your heart and soul and mind and strength in
   the presence of other people. It is contagious.
2. Love other people from the power of God’s grace. That is, show
   them the beauty of Christ through his love for them in the way you
   love them.
3. Tell stories about those who were ravished by the beauty and
   glory of God. It seems that true narratives of peoples’ experience
   with the worth of God are very awakening.
4. Describe God’s value—his treasure—in lavish
   terms.
5. Teach the people how to pray for the transformation of their
   own hearts, that is, teach them how to pray with the psalmists,
   “Incline my heart to Thy testimonies and not to getting gain.”
6. Model for the people extended meditation and reflection on the
   word of God. Most people do not know how to take a word or phrase
   or sentence of scripture, commit it to memory and roll it over
   again and again in their mind and look at it from different sides
   and ask many questions about it and apply it to different aspects
   of their life and think of analogies of it in their mind. But it’s
   precisely in this cogitating that the juices in the fruit begin to
   flow down and awaken the taste buds of the soul.
7. Show the people how to find specific, particular promises in
   the Bible to savor. When Paul says in Romans 15:13, “May the God of
   hope fill you with joy and peace in believing . . .”, he is
   pointing out that joy and peace rise up as we trust in God’s
   precious and very great promises. So people need to do more
   specific searching for promises and then hold them in their minds
   and dwell on them as they go through the day.
8. Pray for your people that their hearts would be softened and
   made tender and more susceptible to the beauty of Christ.
9. Help your people to turn off the television. Few things in our
   culture are more spiritually numbing than the television. Even the
   so-called “good” shows are by and large banal and low-minded and
   anything but cultivating of a rich, deep capacity to enjoy God. And
   when you add to that the barrage of suggestive advertisements that
   accompany virtually every program, I do not wonder why so many of
   our professing Christians are spiritually incapable of experiencing
   high thoughts and deep emotions.
10. Point the people to God-centered biography. The struggles and
    the triumphs of Christians who have known the glory and greatness
    of God are very engaging and awakening.
11. Show the people how to transpose their joys in natural things
    into joy in God. Here’s what I mean. Even the most joyless person
    seems to have one or two things in their lives that make them
    happy. It might be their family. It might be the night sky in the
    north woods. It might be fishing. Help them to make a
    transposition, that is, to take the line of music called “joy” in
    their soul and transpose it up from the natural to the supernatural
    by an act of faith in God as the one who created the family or the
    night sky or the fishing. Help them see that all the things that
    are truly delightful in this world, which awaken pleasures in their
    hearts, are gifts of God and are reflections of his character and
    his goodness. If they are capable of delighting in natural things,
    then by the grace of the Holy Spirit they may be capable of
    transposing those very joys into a higher key and thus discovering
    joy in God.
12. Call the people for confession and renunciation of plaguing
    sins that make them feel inauthentic and block true affection for
    God.
13. Teach them about the necessity and value of suffering in the
    Christian life and how it is not worth comparing to the glory to be
    revealed.

Those are some of the things that might help your people.

What I find is that the most helpful things are simply to attend
to your own soul and what it is that kindles delight for God in you
and then share that with others.

Blessings on you as you perform the high task of mid-wifery in
bringing joy in God to birth in your congregation.

Preachers: Believe the Bible & Watch a DVD

“Read the Bible and believe it, then preach for change, no turning back, no compromise. Sit still and watch a DVD movie once in a while and eat a little popcorn. ‘Thus saith the Lord’ is a heavy responsibility for any mortal. It is better to stay on good speaking terms with God than to feel like the universe rides on every sentence of your sermon.” -Calvin Miller

Eric W. Gritsch, The Wit of Martin Luther

Eric W. Gritsch’s little book, The Wit of Martin Luther, is a fun, interesting, tersely (and sometimes oddly) written account of the central role humor played in Martin Luther’s life. Drawing upon numerous quotations and sources, Gritsch argues that it was Luther’s humor and wit that kept the busy, burdened reformer from taking himself too seriously and loosing sight of the joy of the gospel.

Gritsch highlights the role humor played in Luther’s marriage, in his pastoral relationships, in his interpretation of Scripture, and in his dealings with death. Gritsch writes, “There is overwhelming evidence from Luther’s life and work to prove that for him at least, humor, next to music, was the most effective way to endure the trials of…life. In his way of thinking and being, smiling, laughing, and even mocking become the divinely inspired means of spiritual survival. Knowing of the happy end at the Last Day, Luther could remain cheerful in anticipating it.”

Praise God for the example of Luther, for the reminder to trust God, laugh, and be of good cheer. Are you taking yourself too seriously? Have you forgotten John 16:33–”be of good cheer; I have overcome the world”–? If so, you might especially benefit from reading Gritsch’s 115 short pages on Luther’s healing humor.

Below are a few Luther quotations from the book. Be warned, however, much of Luther’s humor is rather colorful. Actually, much of his humor reads like junior high humor.

“I resist the devil, and often it is with a fart that I chase him away.
When he tempts me with silly sins I say, ‘Devil, yesterday I broke wind
too. Have you written it down on your list?’”

Shortly before his death, Luther said to his wife Katie: “I’m like a ripe stool and the world’s like a gigantic anus, and we’re about to let go of each other.”

“Tomorrow I have to lecture on the drunkenness of Noah [Gen. 9:20-27], so I should drink enough this evening to be able to talk about that wickedness as one who knows by experience.”

While away on a trip, Luther joked about his physical ailments in a letter to Katie: “I am drinking beer from Namburg which tastes to me almost like the beer from Mansfeld which you praised to me. It agrees with me well and gives me about three bowel movements in three hours in the morning.”

2008 Mavericks Surf Contest Is On

From the Mavericks Surf website:

Calvin Miller, Preaching: The Art of Narrative Exposition

Calvin Miller’s new book, Preaching: The Art of Narrative Exposition, is a helpful, engaging, well-written 248 pages on preaching. Calvin Miller, seasoned pastor and author, and now professor of preaching and pastoral ministry at Beeson Divinity School, has much to teach his readers about preaching as he draws from decades of preaching experience. For me, reading Miller felt like sitting down for a meal with a wise grandfather and listening in on story after story and proverb after proverb on the art of preaching.

While I don’t agree with everything this wise grandfather says, and while I found Miller’s stories and proverbs and instruction to be more about preaching in general, rather than specifically about narrative preaching, I heartily recommend this book to my fellow preachers. Engaging this book will serve you as a preacher.

On the front plate of my copy of Preaching I wrote down the page references of over 20 quotes from Calvin Miller that caused me to pause and think.

In the coming weeks I hope to share many of these quotes, but for now, here’s a handful:

Preaching is rescue work.

Preaching is the workhorse of the ecclesia. Preaching was established by Jesus because God has a job to do.

We make a mistake in always trying to write better sermons while paying so little attention to the life of the preacher.

To prepare a great sermon begins with a greatness of being that comes from a magnificent obsession with the Savior.

Because the secular culture didn’t want a Lord, preaching quit saying, ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ Now there are far too few pulpits informing the world that God has something to say to it. In the absence of God’s Word, ‘how-to’ has replaced ‘repent and be baptized.’

The Cross and Christian Growth

“Understanding what God did at the cross is he basis for our growth in the Christian life.”

“Christians need to walk to the cross every day of their lives to ignite the torch of God’s love in their hearts.”

“…everything that God wants to communicate to us begins at the cross. All positive and profound changes in our emotions must begin as our imagination is penetrated with this truth: When we had the least to offer, He offered the Son.”

-David Eckman