David Whiting Live

"Blame It on the Brain?" - A book worth reading

For those in our EQUIP class, you should be reading "Blame It On the Brain" for our next meeting (February 11). For those of you NOT in EQUIP, I would highly recommend you to get this book. It gives a theological basis for how to view head injuries, mental illnesses, and other behaviors. It tackles issues such as depression, A.D.H.D, homosexuality and alcoholism. He write about which of these are sin issues, which ones are malfunctions of the brain, and which ones might be a mixture of the two. It truly would be worth reading.

For those in EQUIP - in case you haven't gotten started or have not read very far, let me point out the chapters that I would urge you to prioritize. Here is what I would recommend if you can't read the entire book by February 11.

• Introduction - Read
• Chapters 1-3 - Read (theological basis for how to view these issues)
• Chapters 4-5 - Optional (Alzheimer's & Head injuries)
• Chapters 6-8 - Read (Intro to Psychiatric Problems, Depression, and A.D.D)
• Chapters 9-10 - Optional (homosexuality and alcoholism)
• Conclusion - Read

I look forward to talking about the issues of medication at the next EQUIP class. As a reminder, we are meeting at 8:00 AM instead of 9:00 AM. Thanks for being flexible. I look forward to seeing you on February 11 at 8:00 AM.

Avoid This John Eldredge Book...

In staff meeting this past week we talked about when you should name names and when you shouldn't. This is one of those times I'm choosing to name a name.

John Eldredge is a popular Christian author. His most popular book is probably "Wild at Heart." And I'm not interested in debating the worth of any or all of his books, but I do want to warn you about his latest book, Beautiful Outlaw. I read a couple of quotes from it and wanted to get the word out - that perhaps you've enjoyed other books of his, but you should avoid this one.

I will let him speak for himself:

QUOTE #1:

I have had similar encounters with Jesus in healing prayer. Last year, as a wise old sage was praying with me through some of the painful memories of my life, I was immediately reminded of the time in middle school when my first girlfriend broke my heart. These wounds can linger for a lifetime if you let them—the first cut is the deepest, and all that. We asked Jesus to take me back to the memory. I saw us, the girl and me; it was that fateful summer day. We were in the living room, just as it happened. Then I saw Jesus enter the room. He was quite stern with her, and it surprised me. That mattered to you? I wondered. Very much, he said.

Then Jesus turned to me. I felt his love. I realized I could let the whole thing go. It was so healing. To understand that Jesus is angry about what happened to you is very, very important in understanding his personality but also in your relationship with him and for your healing. What I love about these encounters is that every time—every time—Jesus is so true to his real personality. Sometimes fierce, sometimes gentle, always generous, and often very playful.

My son was having a tough freshman year at college. So many students there are bound under the religious fog. It was a lonely fall, filled with misunderstanding. One afternoon, just after a classmate said something particularly hurtful to him, Blaine returned to his room and slumped onto his bed, about as low as a young man can get. He looked over to his desk, and “saw” Jesus sitting there, in his desk chair, a smile on his face. He was wearing a pirate hat. Then he disappeared. A whiff of the Emmaus road.

QUOTE #2:

I was going to call this book Jesus of a Thousand Hearts, because of the way he continually breaks into my life. He “speaks” to me through hearts. I’ll find stones in the shape of hearts in rivers where I’m fishing. I’ve seen them almost step-by-step up a mountainside when on a grueling climb. Praying in the morning I’ll look out the window and passing by will be a heart-shaped cloud. Dinner rolls, seashells, stains on my jeans. I’ve won the lottery when it comes to hearts from Jesus. But I am ashamed to admit that last summer, I grew a little impatient with them. I was going through a trying time and seeking God for the answer to many questions. Often, he would simply give me a heart in reply. I’d be walking down the sidewalk, and there in the cement see a heart-shaped hole, made by a bubble when they poured the sidewalk.

I actually grew a little dismissive of them. I didn’t want hearts—I wanted answers.

So, Jesus stopped giving these treasures of our friendship.

Last fall, while walking through an alpine meadow bow hunting, I was asking him, How come you don’t give me hearts anymore? I asked it in a pouting kind of way. At that moment something gray caught my eye. I looked down midstride, and there in the grass, about as big as a dinner plate, was a dried piece of cow manure—in the perfect shape of a heart.

If I didn’t know Jesus adores me, if I didn’t know he is playful, and if our relationship didn’t allow me to receive a playful tease, I might have misinterpreted the icon. But I loved it. It was both, Oh, so now you want a heart? and, I adore you still. A cow-pie heart. That is so Jesus. Wish I’d taken a photo of it—we could have put it on the cover of this book.

That probably says enough. I haven't read the book, I was just shown these quotes and in case you have had a good experience with Eldredge in the past, I'm encouraging you to pass on him.

Helping Others See and Solve Their Problems

We are reading "Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands" for EQUIP. It is an amazing book that I have read three times, but need to keep reading! Those in EQUIP should read as much of the book as possible before Saturday's class

Favorite quotes from chapter 13:

• We tend to be shortsighted and self-absorbed. We forget that God's primary goal is not changing our situations and relationships so that we can be happy, but changing us through our situations and relationships so that we will be holy. (p. 241)
• This is one reason why the Bible does not present divorce as a solution to marriage problems, though it may be a result. Unrepented adultery may provide biblical grounds for release from the marriage covenant, but divorce does not solve the problems that led to it. Divorce changes relationships, situations, and locations, but it doesn't change the heart. People who use divorce as a solution often repeat the same problems in subsequent relationships because the one thing that needed to change reminded unchanged: them! They were blinded by their own now-ism. But if they see their marriage NOW as a training ground for their marriage THEN, the trials God sends their way make perfect sense. As you solve marriage problems with THEN in view, you won't deal with trouble by separating from your spouse. You will learn how God wants to change you so that you can better live with him or her. Your NOW response will be shaped by a THEN perspective. (p. 242)

Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands

On Saturday is our next EQUIP meeting. The book we will finish reading for this week is Paul David Tripp's Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands. This is the third time I've read this book and it is my favorite book I remember reading on the topic of helping people.

We are reading chapters 10 through all appendices for Saturday...

Favorite quote from Chapter 10:

Why would God put the world's most significant, demanding, and difficult human relationship (marriage) smack dab in the middle fo the world's most important process (sanctification)? If he did it so that people would realize their individual dreams, it would have made senses to get them fully sanctified before facing the trials of marriage. But God hasn't made a mistake. He is working on a greater dream, so he tried and troubles us. he lets our dreams slip though our fingers so that as we learn to love each other, we grow more deeply in love with him. (pp. 185-186).

Two favorite quotes from Chapter 11:

A rebuke free of unrighteous anger is a clear sing of biblical love, but I am afraid we have replaced love in our relationships with being "nice." Being nice and acting out of love are not the same thing. Our culture puts a high premium on being tolerant and polite. we seek to avoid uncomfortable moments, so we see, but do not speak. We go so far as to convince ourselves tha we are not speaking because we love the other person, when in reality we fail to speak because we lack love. (p. 202)

Remember, God has ordained that difficult person to be in your life. It is not a sign of God's inattention but his covenant-keeping care. Humbly embrace the fact that the Wonderful Counselor is working on everybody involved. Humbly acknowledge the ways God is using this person to expose the areas where you need to grow. Embrace the fact that God can transform the heart of that person without neglecting you - and vice-versa! (p. 211)

 

One of the Best Books I've Ever Read

Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands is certainly one of the best books I've ever read. This is my third time through it and I think I'm challenged more by it this time than the first two times.

If you are in EQUIP, don't forget to read the first nine chapters by Saturday for our class.

Here are three important, summary quotes:

• from the preface: "Many of us would be relieved if God had placed our sanctification in the hands of trained and paid professionals, but that simply is not the biblical model. God's plan is that through the faithful ministry of every part, the whole body will grow to full maturity in Christ. (p. xi)

• from chapter 1:
  "If you are going to help someone, you need to know what is wrong and how it can be fixed. You go to your auto mechanic because he can determine why your car is malfunctioning and get it running again. Any trustworthy perspective on personal change must do the same. It must correctly diagnose what is wrong with people and what is necessary for them to change.
  
  "This is where our culture gets it completely wrong. In rejecting a biblical view of people, the world eliminates any hope of answering the "what is wrong?" question accurately. And if it wrongly answers this question, how can it possibly provide a proper solution?
  
  "Why do people do the things they do? Is my problem fundamentally an informational one? Will a well-researched, logical set of insights provide the solution? Or is my problem fundamentally experiential? Will dealing with my past solve my problem? Is my problem fundamentally biological? Will helping me achieve chemical balance solve my problem? Or is there something beneath all these things that is more deeply wrong with me? Scripture's answer to this last question is a clear, resounding, "Yes!"
  
  "Scripture would agree that my problem is informational, in that I don't know what I need to know. it also affirms the impact of our experiences, though it maintains that our core problem precedes our experience and goes deeper. The Bible also acknowledges the complex interaction between our physical and spiritual natures, but it never locates our core problem in our biology. in this way, the Bible is radical compared to our culture.
  
  "The Bible says that our core problem, the fundamental reason we do what we do, is sin. What is being said here? Scripture is defining sin as a condition that results in behavior. We all are sinners, and because of this, we all do sinful things." (pp. 9-10)
  
  
• From Chapter one: "If you are going to deal with your own difficulties or assist others who want to deal with theirs, you must correct wrong thinking. Yes, you must deal with the suffering of the past and ways the body isn't properly functioning, but you must do more. You must help them conquer the sin that distorts all these experiences." (p. 10)

LOVE IS...

The best book I've read on marriage is What Did You Expect? I could not name a favorite chapter, but I was blown away this morning reading chapter 12, "Ready, Willing, and Waiting." Check out this list describing real love: (don't read too quickly...)

• Love is being willing to have your life complicated by the needs and struggles of your husband or wife without impatience or anger.
• Love is actively fighting the temptation to be critical and judgmental toward your spouse, while looking for ways to encourage and praise.
• Love is the daily commitment ot resist the needless moments of conflict that come from pointing out and responding to minor offenses.
• Love is being lovingly honest and humbly approachable in times of misunderstanding, and being more committed to unity and love than you are to winning, accusing, or being right.
• Love is a daily commitment to admit your sin, weakness, and failure and to resist the temptation to offer an excuse or shift the blame.
• Love means being willing, when confronted by your spouse, to examine your heart rather than rising to your defense or shifting the focus.
• Love is a daily commitment to grow in love so that the love you offer to your husband or wife is increasingly selfless, mature, and patient.
• Love is being unwilling to do what is wrong when you have been wronged but to look for concrete and specific ways to overcome evil with good.
• Love is being a good student of your spouse, looking for his physical, emotional, and spiritual needs so that in some way you can remove the burden, support him as he carries it, or encourage him along the way.
• Love means being willing to invest the time necessary to discuss, examine, and understand the problems that you face as a couple, staying on task until the problem is removed or you have agreed upon a strategy of response.
• Love is always beign willing to ask for forgiveness and always being committed to grant forgiveness when it is requested.
• Love is recognizing the high value of trust in a marriage and being faithful to your promises and true to your word.
• Love is speaking kindly and gently, even in moments of disagreement, refusing to attack your spouse's character or assault his or her intelligence.
• Love is being unwilling to flatter, lie, manipulate, or deceive in any way in order to co-opt your spouse into giving you what you want to doing something your way.
• Love is being unwilling to ask your spouse to be the source of your identity, meaning and purpose, or inner sense of well-being, while refusing to be the source of his or hers.
• Love is the willingness to have less free time, less sleep, and a busier schedule in order to be faithful to what GOd has called you to be and to do as a husband or a wife.
• Love is a commitment to say no to selfish instincts and to do everythign that is within your ability to promote real unity, functional understanding, and active love in your marriage.
• Love is staying faithful to your commitment to treat your spouse with appreciation, respect, and grace, even in moments when he or she doesn't seem to deserve it or is unwilling to reciprocate.
• Love is the willingness ot make regular and costly sacrifices for the sake of your marriage without asking anything in return or using your sacrifices to place your spouse in your debt.
• Love is being unwilling to make any personal decision or choice that would harm your marriage, hurt your husband or wife, or weaken the bond of trust between you.
• Love is refusing to be self-focused or demanding but instead looking for specific ways to serve, support, and encourage, even when you are busy or tired.
• Love is daily admitting to yourself, your spouse, and God that you are not able to love this way without God's protecting, providing, forgiving, rescuing, and delivering grace.
• Love is a specific commitment of the heart to a specific person that causes you to give yourself to a specific lifestyle of care that requires you to be willing to make sacrifices that have that person's good in view. 

Does this challenge you like it does me?

Gospel Powered Parenting - A Quote

Last year I read the book "Gospel-Powered Parenting" by William Farley. The subtitle is "How the Gospel Shapes and Transforms Parents." It was good.

A member of the church staff is now reading this book and reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from the book. I thought I'd share it since I will be teaching on parenting tomorrow:

In the introduction, Farley is talking about children who either thrived in their faith and carried it into adulthood versus those who abandoned their faith as a teen or adult. Here are two of his conclusions:

1. The results appear to have nothing to do with where the child was educated.  In my experience, there have been no qualitative differences in the spiritual output from home schools, Christian schools, or public schools.
2. The common denominator between success and failure seems to be the spiritual depth and sincerity of the parents, especially the spiritual depth and sincerity of the father.  There seems to be a strong correlation between the faith, commitment, and sincerity of the family's head and the spiritual vitality of his adult children.

That is SO true. Tomorrow I will talk about the need for it to be "in you" before it ever gets into your children.  This is a good reminder. Parents often struggle with schooling choices - and those choices MUST be made carefully.  But there is something FAR more important than that schooling choice, and that is the importance of living our faith in Christ.

Relationships: A Mess Worth Making - chapter 13

By the way - we have two more baptisms today! Don't miss 'em... one at each service.

This coming Saturday is our next EQUIP class. I hope you are planning to make it and trying to keep up with the reading.

Here is a summary of some of the best parts of chapter 13: TIME AND MONEY

• How important is God's fame or glory to you? The answer to this question can be seen, partly in the way you invest your time and money isn't complicated, but it isn't easy, either. 
• Over the past twenty years, seventy percent of Americans only gave one or two percent of their income to charitable causes. Thirty percent do not give at all!
• Both the Old and New Testament say that you begin  to become a generous person when you invest at least ten percent of your income in the things of God.
• When I got married, I did what every other groom does. I repeated vows to my wife that said I would love her sacrificially all the days of my life. Who was I kidding? I look back and see how little I understood what I promised. What I was really thinking, to a large degree, was, This is great! I love me and now you are going to love me! My love was very shallow. It only took a few days of marriage to figure that out!

 

Relationships: A Mess Worth Making - chapter 12

A couple of days ago, I posted a blog saying that EQUIP is THIS Saturday. That was wrong. It is the next Saturday (July 9).  I'm sorry for the confusion.  I typed those posts ahead of a trip I went on and got the dates confused.

Here are some valuable thoughts from chapter 12 on MERCY:

• There is a corollary to Murphy's Law that says, "Everything you decide to do costs more than you first estimated." So it is with ministry. If you have a committment to do more than just survive the people around you, an agenda higher than your own happiness, and a desire to be an instrument in God's hands, you will soon learn that the cost of ministry always exceeds your preliminary calculations. The same is true for mercy.
• A relationship without mercy is a relationship lived outside biblical borders. God clearly calls us to respond to one another out of a heart of mercy. He commands us to extend the same mercy to others that we have received from him. The problem is that mercy is hard.
• As you extend mercy and encounter its heavy cost, you will see how thin your commitment to mercy is and how unmerciful your responses can be. It's very humbling, but a commitment to mercy will reveal your own need for mercy.
• Even while we are basking in God's forgiveness, we find it incredibly difficult to bear with the sin and weakness of others. That's why, in the mirror of mercy, all of us look the same. 
• What makes mercy merciful is a heartfelt compassion that results in some kind of action toward the other person. Mercy is not just something you fell; mercy is something you do. It is a lifestyle, a stance toward others that shapes everything we say and do.
• When you extend mercy, you will begin to see how selfish, impatient, unforgiving, and inconsistent you can be. Mercy will how you how much your own heart still needs the continuing work of the Redeemer.

Relationships: A Mess Worth Making - chapter 10

EQUIP is coming up on Saturday... Are you up to speed? Today, I highlight some parts of chapter 10: HOPE

• Already the power of sin has been broken, but the presence of sin has not yet been eradicated. (p. 108)
• The timetable is in the hands of the sovereign Lord of grace. His timing is always right and he never gets a wrong address. Our job is to learn how to best live in the middle. So we live as broken people who are being repaired, living among neighbors in the same condition, always thankful for what has already been done but ever aware of our need for what we have not yet been given. (p. 109)
• Everyone who lives between the already and the not yet will experience four things:
  • Our relationships will never work according to our plan
  • Our relationships will never live up to our expectations
    • This side of eternity, none of us get to be with the person of our dreams and none of us are ready to be the person of someone else's dreams! We are all flawed people living in fallen world, but with a faithful God. And at some point in every relationship, we are required to accept graciously who the other person is, even as we humbly admit who we are.
  • Our relationships will always grapple with some kind of difficulty
  • Our relationships will always need to improve (pp. 109-110)
• Because our relationships are always lived out in the middle of some kind of difficulty, good relationships demand character. Remember, your relationships have not been designed by God as vehicles for human happiness but as instruments of redemption. (p. 110)