...ugh

I am definitely not looking forward to attending my grandma's funeral - Whether it is just because she is the last grandparent from that side to die, or if it is the emotions of reading a passage (John 3) that she wanted read at her husbands funeral...now for her's - I'm not sure. Emotions seem high, tension thick, and I'm simply worn out. Thank God for the book of Hebrews, within which we know that Jesus understands the gravity, the weightiness, and pressure of life.

Yea, that sucked

Christless, universalist, teaching is nothing more than heresy. At best it will do what Matt Chandler said so well, "inoculate them to the Gospel." The Bible is understood through the Gospel (Jesus), therefore if the Gospel (Christ) is taken out of Biblical teaching, then the teaching ceases to be Biblical and becomes a self-help, "come feel good about yourself 'cause you're naturally good." This kind of teaching is like Luther said while writing to Erasmus, "So mean and vile, that I greatly feel for for you for having defiled your most beautiful language with such vile trash."

To the Cross We Cling

For: Grandma Fern

When the call comes, and a loved one lays dying
How should we think of the one that is flying?

Do we look for the life well lived,
Or go to the lists of all that's achieved?

Where can we look for solidarity?
What is there to see?

Of One I only know,
He alone can show
That life well lived is worthless,
And what's achieved is pointless,
If at the fore of thought and deed
is not the Cross of Christ.

So when the call comes, and a loved one lays dying
To the Cross we cling.
For in the Cross we've seen,
Love unbounded,
Grace unrestricted,
Wrath appeased,
Sin removed,
Death chained.

Thus as we hold the hand, and say our last farewells
To the Cross we cling.
For glory comes for you, and leaves me,
But hope must fill my heart
For this one must depart,
And when time comes for me,
I know that you I'll see,
For to the Cross we cling.

Bono

Awesome interview with Bono here. Check it out.

New Piper

So, my Dad bought me the new Piper book, "Finally Alive." So far the intro has been awesome. Piper after giving some stats from the Barna Group about the indistinguishableness of non-christians from "born again" Christians says,
"I want to say loud and clear that when the Barna Group uses the term born again to describe American church-goers whose lives are indistinguishable from the world and who sin as much as the world, and sacrifice for others as little as the world, and embrace injustice as readily as the world, and covet things as greedily as the world, and enjoy God-ignoring entertainment as enthusiastically as the world-when the term born again is used to describe these professing christians, the Barna Group is making a profound mistake."

Time to self-examine.