Hence we learn what exceeding great reason we have to admire the grace of God towards us, that he should so lay out himself to provide such a feast for our souls. God hasn’t provided this feast for those that are rich, that are able to recompense him by inviting him again, nor for them that are able to make any recompense at all; but those that are poor and have nothing to pay. We were in a famishing miserable condition when the King invited to the marriage feast of his Son, and not only so, but to be his bride.
God did not make this feast for those that were excellent and worthy to be invited to such a royal feast, but for those that [were] filthy, that were loathsome creatures clothed in rags, or rather naked, and defiled with filth. He did not invite those that were happy already, but poor beggars that were scattered, wandering in the highways and dwelling under hedges, those that were halt and lame and blind. Such all naturally are, but God sends forth his messengers, and calls many such to his houses, and washes them from their filthiness and clothes them with white raiment, adorns [them] with robes as king’s children and makes them to sit down at his table.
O, what reason have we [to] admire the wonderful grace of God herein!
Jonathan Edwards, Sermons and Discourses: 1723-1729, Ed. Kenneth P. Minkema
Archive for October, 2011
“God did not make this feast for those that were excellent and worthy to be invited” – Jonathan Edwards
Posted in Quotes on October 21, 2011| 1 Comment »
Read it again! “What is God sovereign over?” by Justin Taylor
Posted in Scripture on October 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »
I know most of you already follow Justin Taylor’s blog, Between Two Worlds.
But this short collection of verses on God’s sovereignty is worth reading again even if you caught it yesterday: What Is God Sovereign Over?
Another member at Bethlehem, Phil Norris, has created a whole blog dedicated to God’s sovereignty as expressed in his Word. Appropriately he has titled it God’s Good, Great & Awesome Sovereignty in His Own Words.
“We are no judges at all” Oswald Chambers
Posted in Quotes on October 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »
God puts His saints where they will glorify Him, and we are no judges at all of where that is.
Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, for August 10
“And now I wear your righteousness!”
Posted in commentary on October 17, 2011| 2 Comments »
Dianne and I were both touched by a particular hymn on Sunday. Dianne suggested it might comfort others:
Not What My Hands Have Done, original words by Horatius Bonar and modern music by Aaron Keyes.
The author, Horatius Bonar, wrote the original words in 1861. He and his wife lost five children, all young.
Aaron Keyes wrote the music we heard on Sunday.
May God use it to gladden your heart in what he has done for you!
“There is no greater mercy that I know of on earth than good health except it be sickness.” Spurgeon
Posted in Quotes on October 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »
There is no greater mercy that I know of on earth than good health except it be sickness; and that has often been a greater mercy to me than health.
It is a good thing to be without a trouble; but it is a better thing to have a trouble, and know how to get grace enough to bear it.
I am not so much afraid of the devil when he roars, as I am when he pretends to go to sleep. I think that, oftentimes, a roaring devil keeps us awake; and the troubles of this life stir us up to go to God in prayer, and that which looks to us ill turns to our good.
“We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28 KJV).
C.H. Spurgeon, The Simplicity and Sublimity of Salvation, delivered June 5, 1892.
God can heal me. Why doesn’t he?
Posted in commentary, Special Events on October 15, 2011| 1 Comment »
Thank you to Justin Taylor for pointing to this lecture by D.A. Carson.
Last year, D.A. Carson gave a lecture in California, How Could a Good God Allow Suffering. Dr. Carson has written several dozen books, including God Who Is There: Finding Your Place in God’s Story and How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil. I recommend them both.
And I recommend this lecture embedded below. But if you only have five minutes, go to the 1 hour and 27 minute mark of the video to watch his answer to this question: I’ve been living with major physical pain and I know God can heal me and His will is for me to be healed. Why won’t he or why doesn’t He?
Are you at the end of your strength?
Posted in Scripture on October 14, 2011| 2 Comments »
For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.
But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.
(2 Corinthians 1:8b-9 ESV)
“Adoption is about taking on risk as cross-bearing love.” Russell Moore
Posted in commentary, Quotes on October 13, 2011| 12 Comments »
Recently, Brenda Fischer, our coordinator for the disability ministry at Bethlehem, sent me statistics on the numbers of children with disabilities God has brought to Bethlehem. She ended with this statement:
At Bethlehem we have a disproportionately high number of the last three mostly because of so many adopted children in our church body.
The ‘last three’ she is referencing are fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and reactive attachment disorder.
Each of those disabilities carries heavy, lifelong burdens on the children and families.
And they are coming to our church because families are pursuing the good of others in obedience to Christ. Families are intentionally taking the risk that their adopted child will have a significant disability which could change the entire family.
So I particularly appreciated Dr. Russell Moore’s blog post from yesterday, Don’t Adopt!
Anyone even remotely familier with him or his book, Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches, would immediately recognize that he’s trying to say something important through that provocative title. And he delivered:
Love of any kind brings risk, and, in a fallen world, brings hurt. Simeon tells our Lord’s mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, that a sword would pierce her heart. That’s true, in some sense, for every mother, every father. Even beyond that, every adoption, every orphan, represents a tragedy. Someone was killed, someone left, someone was impoverished, or someone was diseased. Wrapped up in each situation is some kind of hurt, and all that accompanies that. That’s the reason there really is no adoption that is not a “special needs” adoption; you just might not know on the front end what those special needs are. . .
We need a battalion of Christians ready to adopt, foster, and minister to orphans. But that means we need Christians ready to care for real orphans, with all the brokenness and risk that comes with it. We need Christians who can reflect the adopting power of the gospel, which didn’t seek out a boutique nursery but a household of ex-orphans who were found wallowing in our own blood, with Satan’s genes in our bloodstreams.
Yes and amen!
So, if a church is serious about adoption, it will either already be serious about disability in the lives of its members or it will soon need to become serious about it. And every church should be serious about adoption, because we know that God is:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:3-6 ESV).
Wilberforce – “If ever there was a good man and happy man on earth, he was one.”
Posted in commentary, Special Events on October 12, 2011| Leave a Comment »
William Wilberforce is famous for his tireless, decades-long campaign against slavery. But did you know he was happy?
The poet Robert Southey said, “I never saw any other man who seemed to enjoy such a perpetual serenity and sunshine of spirit. In conversing with him, you feel assured that there is no guile in him; that if ever there was a good man and happy man on earth, he was one.” In 1881 Dorothy Wordsworth wrote, “Though shattered in constitution and feeble in body he is as lively and animated as in the days of his youth.” His sense of humor and delight in all that was good was vigorous and unmistakable. In 1824 John Russell gave a speech in the Commons with such wit that Wilberforce “collapsed in helpless laughter.” John Piper, Peculiar Doctrines, Public Morals and the Political Welfare, 2002 Desiring God Pastors Conference.
And he truly was ‘shattered in constitution and feeble in body’ (paragraph format and text in bold are mine):
On top of this family burden came the death of his daughter Barbara. In the autumn of 1821, at 32, she was diagnosed with consumption (tuberculosis). She died five days after Christmas. Wilberforce wrote to a friend, “Oh my dear Friend, it is in such seasons as these that the value of the promises of the Word of God are ascertained both by the dying and the attendant relatives. . . . The assured persuasion of Barbara’s happiness has taken away the sting of death.”
He sounds strong, but the blow shook his remaining strength, and in March of 1822, he wrote to his son, “I am confined by a new malady, the Gout.”
The word “new” in that letter signals that Wilberforce labored under some other extraordinary physical handicaps that made his long perseverance political life all the more remarkable.
He wrote in 1788 that his eyes were so bad “[I can scarcely] see how to direct my pen. . .” In later years he frequently mentioned the “peculiar complaint of my eyes,” that he could not see well enough to read or write during the first hours of the day. John Piper, Peculiar Doctrines, Public Morals and the Political Welfare, 2002 Desiring God Pastors Conference.
Happy, and disabled? How?
The main burden of Wilberforce’s book, A Practical View of Christianity, is to show that true Christianity, which consists in these new, indomitable spiritual affections for Christ, is rooted in the great doctrines of the Bible about Sin and Christ and Faith. “Let him then who would abound and grow in this Christian principle, be much conversant with the great doctrines of the Gospel.” More specifically, he says:
If we would . . . rejoice in [Christ] as triumphantly as the first Christians did; we must learn, like them to repose our entire trust in him and to adopt the language of the apostle, ‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Jesus Christ’ [Galatians 6:14], “who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” [1 Corinthians 1:30]. John Piper, Peculiar Doctrines, Public Morals and the Political Welfare, 2002 Desiring God Pastors Conference.
Thank you, Pastor John, for this wonderful, helpful biography of William Wilberforce. And thanks be to God for creating such a happy man as Wilberforce who, though experiencing extraordinary personal and physical pain, always looked to Jesus and had a constant, unending supply of joy as he battled evil his entire life.
May we happily do the same in our own time.
All conference audio and video for The Works of God: God’s Good Design in Disability are now available at Desiring God!
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Unspeakable cruelty. Unending hope.
Posted in commentary, News on October 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The news from Philadelphia is a nightmare for any parent with a child with a severe cognitive impairment.
Three people were arrested in Philadelphia for imprisoning and neglecting four adults with cognitive impairments. The three people are accused of locking these disabled adults in a subbasement of a building, without lights or access to a toilet.
The cruelty is breathtaking.
My oldest son is even more vulnerable than those four adults. He will always be vulnerable. I read stories like that and fear about the future rises – what will happen when I can’t take care of him any longer?
As God orchestrates things, on Tuesday evening I was in the church affiliated with my children’s school and passed by that church’s regular Tuesday night gathering of adults with special needs, most of them with cognitive disabilities.
But I didn’t watch the participants much; I watched their leaders and volunteers.
They were happy and engaged. I observed for just a few minutes, but I didn’t see anyone exhibiting anything but delight – no impatient body language, no outward signs of reluctant obligation, no syrupy, overly-cheerful infantile voices. The worship leader was WORSHIPPING. And those adults who could, were worshipping with him.
I don’t know anything about that group – maybe they were all family members or paid staff and this was just how they spend every-other Tuesday with their disabled church members.
But in contrast to that horrific news story, I was watching the body minister to and be ministered by adults with cognitive disabilities in some special, God-honoring ways.
My son might outlive me; we have no idea what Paul’s lifespan is and no doctor has ever even offered a guess. But he won’t outlive the one who created him. He will always have a perfect Father to care for him. That doesn’t mean evil won’t ever touch him. But it does mean God knows what he is doing for his glory and my son’s eternal good.
“The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice.
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.” Deuteronomy 32:4
And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:19
I like to think my few minutes on Tuesday night was a gift for me, a reminder from God that he loves his church with a white-hot, all-encompassing, joyful passion that will never fade. And my boy is part of that Church.
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