Family = Priceless

This summer I have had several great moments with my wife, daughter, and my extended family of my parents and brothers (and my sister-in-law).

The fact of the matter is you couldn't give me a million bucks!!! to replace the memories and the time spent with my parents....my wife....my daughter, etc. My prayer is that you see time with your family and loved ones as so valuable that you can't put a sight - related number on it. Friends, there is no price tag that you can put on it and I pray that you don't.

Saved From Wrath IV

Excerpts taken from John Piper's Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came To Die (Crossway, 2006).

God's law demanded, "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might" (Deut. 6:5). but we have all loved other things more. I have loved

• Myself more
  
• Sports more
• Experiences more
• Possessions more
• The internet more

This is what sin is - dishonoring God by preferring other things over him, and acting on those preferences. Therefore, the Bible says, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). We glorify what we enjoy most. And it isn't God. Our God is just, he does not sweep these crimes under the rug.....He feels a holy wrath against them. God sends His own Son to absorb his wrath and bear the curse for all who trust him. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13).

I am thankful for this term called "propitiation". It refers to the removal of God's wrath by providing a substitute. The substitute, Jesus Christ, does not just cancel the wrath; he ABSORBS it! and diverts it from US ----> to HIMSELF. God's wrath is just, and it was spent, not withdrawn.

Oh how I praise the Lord and give Him glory for this truth - Jesus absorbed the wrath of God for a dirty rotten sinner like me.

Nashville Missions Wrap

The blogging has been quite slow lately due to being in Nashville for our 2008 summer mission trip. My responsibilities for the week consisted of

1. Leading our team along with fellow youth leader Jodi Stende
2. Organizing the transportation via charter buses for 14 churches from North and South Dakota (3 buses and 166 students and leaders). Practicing patience with bus drivers who sometimes get cranky and sometimes just need a smoke.
   
3. Teaching a breakout session comprised of students from Fargo, ND, Calgary, AB, Canada, and Madison, SD.
4. Staying alive and not sweating to death.
5. Refraining from asking people if Pro Wrestling and NASCAR are real sports.
6. Keeping an eye on one of our boys who kept leaving messages for Cari Underwood via her publisist.

We were able to stay at Vanderbilt University for the week and I must say it is the most beautiful college campus that I had ever been on. Interestingly enough Vandy is a part of the SEC conference and compete against the likes of U of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Florida in athletics despite their enrollment of a little more than 6,000 students.

Our missions project for the week was to serve an organization named Monroe Harding. Monroe Harding is an organization that aids in the developing of 16-19 year old boys that have been troubled by various issues relating to the law or abuse. The organiztion teaches the boys life skills and teaches them as many pursue their GED. We served them by painting, cleaning, doing yard work, cutting branches, dethawing freezers, and making a wood-chip walking path for the boys. We didn't get to interact with the boys individually, but our kids had to trust that what we did everyday God would take and use for His glory sake.

The last interesting nugget from the trip was the frustration surrounding our buses. I'll just post the pictures, but this provided a 2 hour delay waiting for a wrecker that took place in St Josephs, Missouri at 4 a.m. while everyone was sleeping on their respective buses. Result = Not fun, but trusting the Lord to work things together for good for those who love Him.










This kind of reminds me of when I wrecked a swather while working for Hermansdale Farms of Brinsmade, ND at age 16.

Nashville: Hello Music City!

There has been a lack of content on the blog lately due to being gone and in Nashville for a mission trip with our youth group from MBC. I will highlight this trip and have a full write up to come in the days ahead. A couple nuggets from the upcoming write up.

• Nashville is stinkin hot and humid! (It was 97 today with a max humidity of 84%)
  
• The rescue mission we are working at has a lady that works with us that said ya'all around 200 times in 3 hours today
• My breakout session that I led today enjoyed my quote of the day as I explained that I am from North Dakot (a great agricultural hub): "Christians are like manure: Spread them out and they help everything grow better, but keep them in one big pile and they stink horribly." (Francis Chan).

More to come!

Former Viking Joe Senser

Here is an interesting story about the Vikings former commentator Joe Senser. He has become a licensed minister - as well as bar owner. The main highlight for me was seeing that he challenges men to be great fathers.

Kris Draper and the Stanley Cup

As a relatively new father I don't know all the tricks of the trade. My skills and knowledge of childcare apparently have company as Kris Draper of the Detroit Red Wings recently got to take the Stanley Cup to his hometown of Toronto and show it off, take pictures with it, and display it to his hometown friends.

Draper apparently forgets tendencies of toddlers as he put his daughter Cameron on top of the cup without a diaper on and she proceeded to quoting Draper to "take a poop in the Stanley Cup." Draper concluded with acknowledging that the Cup was cleaned up and he drank out of it later that night.

Church Membership I

How important is church membership? I have been thinking about this question a lot lately as in working in a baptist church we require membership to be accompanied with a couple of things.

1. The taking of our Discover Class (a 4 hour class designed to communicate the church's theology, doctrine, and mission/vision to the attendee)
2. A testimony of born-again faith to the church's leadership board accompanied with a time for questions from the board to the candidate and vise versa.
   
3. A testimony of being baptized by immersion or the desire to do so soon (only after they have been baptized is their membership final). This point is usually the hot topic and has historically been in the church a point of division and debate.
   

John Piper recently dissected this issue at Bethlehem Baptist Church and this sermon pretty much blew me away. I highly encourage you to watch this sermon if you are struggling with church membership and baptism. The issue in his sermon wasn't baptism by immersion, but church membership and how it relates to membership. Here is an excerpt from the sermon.

"The issue was: How should our church relate to those who are born again, and deeply committed to the Bible and to Christ, but are not yet persuaded that their infant baptism is unbiblical and invalid? Should such believers be admitted in some cases to membership at Bethlehem? Or to put the question in the larger general way: Should the front door of the local church be roughly the same size as the door to the universal body of Christ? In other words, should we say to any person: We know you have truly entered into membership in the universal body of Christ, but you may not enter into membership in this local expression of the body of Christ?

Or another way to put the issue is: How does the seriousness of exclusion from local church membership compare with the seriousness of not being baptized even though, after studying the Scriptures and trying to be obedient, the unbaptized person believes that he is baptized? In the real world where genuine, Bible-believing, gospel-loving, Christ-exalting, missions-minded Christians do not agree on the meaning of baptism in the New Testament, how should we relate to each other?

On the one hand, if we say, “You may be a member of this church even though you are not biblically baptized,” that seems to undermine the importance that the New Testament puts on baptism. All Christians we know about in the early church were baptized (except the thief on the cross). That is how you expressed your faith publicly and became part of the visible church.

On the other hand, if we say, “Even though you are born again and a member of Christ, you may not be a member of this church,” that seems to undermine the person’s faith and the meaning of the local church. It seems to undermine faith because from one angle, exclusion from membership is like front-end excommunication before membership has happened. When you excommunicate a member from the church, according to Matthew 18:17, you “let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” In other words, you love him and try to win him as an unbeliever. That sounds really serious. Are we saying to those we exclude from membership that they are in the category of an unbeliever?

And saying no to a genuine believer who is part of the universal body of Christ seems to undermine the meaning of the local church as an expression of that universal church."

Piper provide 5 strands of evidence in the NT for church membership

• The Church Is to Discipline Its Members - Church membership is implied by the way the church is supposed to discipline its members. Consider the implication of Matthew 18:15–17. If there is no church membership, how can you define the group that will take up this sensitive and weighty matter of exhorting the unrepentant person and finally rendering a judgment about his standing in the community? It’s hard to believe that just anyone who showed up claiming to be a Christian could be a part of that gathering. Surely, “the church” must be a definable group to handle such a weighty matter. You know who you mean when you “take it to the church.”
• Excommunication Exists - Church membership is implied by the simple fact that excommunication even exists. Paul implies this in 1 Corinthians 5:12–13. Being in the church is definable. The other implication is that a person can be removed from being “in the church.” Such a formal removal would not be possible if there were no such thing as a clear membership—who is an accountable part of this body, and who is not?
• Christians Required to Submit to Their Leaders - Church membership is implied in the biblical requirement of Christians to be submitted to a group of church leaders, elders, or pastors. The point here is that without membership, who is it that the New Testament is referring to who must submit to a specific group of leaders? (Hebrews 13:17)

• Shepherds Required to Care for Their Flock - Church membership is implied in the way the New Testament requires elders to care for the flock in their charge (Acts 20:28).
• The Metaphor of the Body - Church membership is implied in the metaphor of the body(1 Corinthians 12:12–31). The original meaning of the word member is member of a body, like hand and foot and eye and ear. So the question this imagery raises for the local church that Paul is describing in 1 Corinthians 12 is: Who intends to be treated as a hand or foot or eye or ear of this body? There is a unity and organic relationship implied in the imagery of the body. There is something unnatural about a Christian attaching himself to a body of believers and not being a member of the body.

How important is church membership to you?