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The Beginning of Knowledge

"Of all things that are to be known this is most evident, that God is to be feared, to be reverenced, served, and worshipped; this is so the beginning of knowledge that those know nothing who do not know this"

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible Vol III, 793

(quoted in Bradley's introduction to Buyon, A Treatise of the Fear of God)

"Unsafe" People and Explaining the Gospel to Our Children

"...without realizing it, parents like me are sometimes embarrassed by Jesus. Why would Jesus draw people like that to himself? It is hard for parents to remember that children in the crowds saw Jesus with prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners. Parents want to go into Jesus's presence at church in order to keep their kids safe from the world. But Jesus keeps drawing unsafe people from the world to himself. We are confounded. We complain, 'How am I supposed to explain this to my kids?' With that complaint we lose sight of something vital: To explain how Jesus reaches people no matter where they've been or what they've done is to explain to our kids the gospel. It is to explain our own testimony. It is to teach the next generation how Jesus relates to people and the world"

(Eswine, Preaching to a Post-Everything World, 81)

What Preachers Avoid?

"Identify those areas of reality that a preacher does not talk about and you will discover those spheres of reality that people are daily trying to navigate without the light of God's Word"

(Eswine, Preaching to a Post-Everything World, 30)

Knowledge of the Holy

“We cannot grasp the true meaning of the divine holiness by thinking of someone or something very pure and then raising the concept to the highest degree we are capable of. God’s holiness is not simply the best we know infinitely bettered. We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable. The natural man is blind to it. He may fear God’s power and admire His wisdom, but His holiness he cannot even imagine. Only the Spirit of the Holy One can impart to the human spirit the knowledge of the holy.”

(A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy , 104)

Spurgeon on 'would-be' eloquence

"The art of saying commonplace things elegantly, pompously, grandiloquently, bombastically, is not lost among us, although its utter extinction were 'a consummation devoutly to be wished.'"

(Lectures to My Students, 84)

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Creating the Church Around...

Living as we do after the Fall but before the Heavenly City, we are in a time when faith is central, and so the Word must be central-- because God's Holy Spirit creates His people by His Word! We can create a people by other means, and this is the great temptation of churches.  We can create a people around a certain ethnicity. We can create a people around a fully-graded choir program. We can find people who will get excited about a building project or a denominational identity. We can create a people around social opportunities for young mothers or Caribbean cruises for singles. We can create a people around men's groups. We can even create a people around the personality of a preacher. And God can surely use all of these things. But in the final analysis the people of God, the church of God, can only be created around the Word of God (Mark Dever, 9 marks of a healthy church, 50).

MIke Doughty | "The Way I See It"

I grabbed a coffee at DFW on our way home last night and was excited to see a thought-provoking quote on a Starbucks cup by an artist I thoroughly enjoy:

The Way I See It #158
"It's tragic the way extremists co-opt the notion of God, and that hipsters and artists reject spirituality out of hand. I don't have a fixed idea of God. But I feel that it's us--the messed-up, the half-crazy, the burning, the questing--that need God, a lot more than the goody-two-shoes do."--Mike Doughty, Musician

RELATED

Mike Doughty @ Myspace
Mike Doughty's Blog
Looking At The World From the Bottom of a Well | youtube video
Doughty Live @ The Fox Theatre (emusic)
Haughty Melodic
Skittish/Rockity Roll

Technorati Tags: God, MikeDoughty, Starbucks, The Way I See It

Quote of the Day

Nothing confirms the immediacy and the immaturity of the blogosphere than seeing an undergraduate publicly rebuke John Piper for his critique of N.T. Wright on justification--before seeing the manuscript!

Justin Taylor, in reference to the comments on this post. Made my day and it's not even 6:00am!

(Welcome back from vacation JT!)

Cormac McCarthy

"In an ideal world the gossip of the idle would be of no consequence. But I have seen the consequences in the real world and they can be very grave indeed" (Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses, 136).

Piper on Spiritual Leadership

Spiritual Leadership is: "Knowing where God wants people to be and taking the initiative to get them there by God's means in reliance upon God's power"

(Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry, 11)

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