I have a bad habit of starting a book, reading it for a few days, starting another book at the same time, reading both for a few days, starting another book, reading all three, etc. Typically I’m juggling 3-4 at a time. I don’t know why I do this. Sometimes I wish I could stop, but this has been the pattern for many years now. All that is to say that over the past few weeks I’ve read some great quotes and wanted to share them here.
I have heard it said, “God didn’t die for frogs. So he was responding to our value as humans.” This turns grace on its head. We are worse off than frogs. They have not sinned. They have not rebelled and treated God with the contempt of being inconsequential in their lives. God did not have to die for frogs. They aren’t bad enough. We are. Our debt is so great, only a divine sacrifice could pay it. There is only one explanation for God’s sacrifice for us. It is not us. It is “the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7). It is all free. It is not a response to our worth. It is the overflow of his infinite worth. In fact, that is what divine love is in the end: a passion to enthrall undeserving sinners, at great cost, with what will make us supremely happy forever, namely, his infinite beauty. – John Piper, Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die, pg. 29
It is not pleasant to realize how much of a burden is placed on ministers of music and worship because of the dependence on style change as the core of the solution. Ironically enough, while a music minister is expected to make distinct style jumps from one worship service to the next, the preaching pastor may do nothing more from one service to another than to take off his or her robe or more from the pulpit to the chancel floor. How out of proportion! How perplexing to think of the burden we have placed on music, this fleeting human construct. The problem is not with any one style but with the reluctance of people to rub up against a multiplicity of styles, for it is the rubbing – the creative friction – that could bring about the stylistic syntheses that the body of Christ so desperately needs…The church desperately needs an artistic reformation that accomplishes two things at once: first, it takes music out of the limelight and puts Christ and his Word back into prominence; and second, it strives creatively for a synthesis of new, old and crosscultural styles. A deep understanding of the arts, coupled to the understanding that at best the music of corporate worship is simple, humble, and variegated, would bring something about that would make all churches into worshiping and witnessing churches that happen to sing. – Harold Best, Unceasing Worship, pg. 75
But has Paul got a self-sufficiency? you will say. How are we sufficient of ourselves? Our Apostle affirms in another case, ‘That we are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves’ (2 Corinthians 3.5). Therefore his meaning must be, I find a sufficiency of satisfaction in my own heart, through the grace of Christ that is in me. Though I have not outward comforts and worldly conveniences to supply my necessities, yet I have a sufficient portion between Christ and my soul abundantly to satisfy me in every condition. – Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, pg. 18
Pick up a book, or three, and enjoy the summer!
