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
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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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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.
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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
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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!
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“There is no greater mercy that I know of on earth than good health except it be sickness.” Spurgeon
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.
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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?
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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)
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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).
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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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Another reason why I pray for Bethlehem College and Seminary
October 22, 2011 by John Knight
I recently reviewed some articles in Disabilities Studies Quarterly, “the first journal in the field of disability studies.” Their search engine took me immediately to interesting articles on theology and the Bible.
Interesting, but entirely unhelpful if I want to actually gain some understanding of the Bible. The need to be smart and credentialed is a powerful encouragement for pride-filled people (like me) to come up with novel interpretations of the Bible and creative characterizations for who God is. But it doesn’t actually help me know a whole lot about the Bible or God.
Another thought struck me as I was reading through this journal: these folks aren’t tethered to the Bible, but they want to be tethered to something. Several articles quote Bible verses (frequently not many), but all of the articles had numerous footnotes and references to other scholars. A few quoted some of the old church fathers, but only when those church fathers either supported a more post-modern opinion on a narrow subject, or were clearly ‘wrong’ about something.
Their confidence in God’s word, however, was small. Submission to the Bible as having authority was entirely missing.
Please, pray for Bethlehem College and Seminary and its students, faculty and administration. May they always embrace God as their highest treasure and worthy of their best intellectual engagement. And may they never treat the Bible cavalierly or assume their finite wisdom is greater than the wisdom of God.
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