"How Can I Say What I'm Feeling?

Dr. David Murray, on his blog Head Heart Hand, offers some very good reasons why the Psalms are so impactful in a Christian's life. The whole piece is worthwhile reading as we think of that age-old dilemma of expressing how we feel about something.

Whether it is feelings of loss or despair, loneliness or fear, joy or thanksgiving... all who come to the Psalms discover that the words which capture our experiences and emotions are already composed for us by the One who identifies with us in our suffering and thanksgiving!

"Despite hundreds of new Christian songs, of every possible genre, being composed every year, the ancient Psalms are experiencing somewhat of a revival in various places. Why?

I believe the main reason is their therapeutic value; in a day of so many disordered emotions, worshippers are discovering how the Psalms minister so powerfully to their emotional lives."

...

The Psalms express the full range of human emotions
"The Psalms contain an incomparably rich mixture of extreme and varied emotions: grief and joy, doubt and confidence, loneliness and fellowship, despair and hope, fear and courage, defeat and victory, complaint and praise, etc.

Is it any wonder that Calvin called the Psalms “an Anatomy of all Parts of the Soul”? As he explained: “There is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn to life all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated.”

Read the whole piece online here: http://headhearthand.org/blog/2012/02/13/therapeutic-praise/

Rollercoaster photo credit: Matt McK on Unsplash

"I Believe in Jesus Christ": J.I. Packer on the Touchstone of Christianity

In his simple explanation of the Apostles' Creed, Dr. J.I. Packer writes,

"When [the creed] called God "maker of heaven and earth," it parted company with Hinduism and Eastern faiths generally; now, by calling Jesus Christ God's only Son, [our creed] parts company with Judaism and Islam and stands quite alone. This claim for Jesus is both the touchstone of Christianity and the ingredient that makes it unique."

It's helpful for us to remember this truth as the touchstone of our faith and the very thing that makes Christianity such a vital religion with a message of truth and life for all who will listen! 

Introducing You to the Westminster Standards

In "Welcome to a Reformed Church" Rev. Daniel Hyde offers a helpful intro to the confessional standards of our congregation:

"The Westminster Standards -- the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), the Westminster Larger Catechism (1648), and the Westminster Shorter Catechism (1648) -- were written during the brief period of Puritan ascendancy in mid-seventeenth-century England. The so-called "Long Parliament" dealt with the question of what form the English church would take. In January 1643, Parliament met to abolish the office of bishop, which practically ruled the Church of England. This led to the calling of an assembly of 121 theologians and elders ('divines') in July 1643. While Parliament expected a revision of the Church of England's Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion in order to unite the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the delegates to the assembly came to see that something more was needed. In the summer of 1644, a committee was created to write a confession of the united Reformed faith in Great Britain."

photo credit: Photo by Luca Micheli on Unsplash

What is Typology?

I wanted to share a post on the Reformed Reader site that does a good job of explaining what we mean by 'typology' and how it is related to the biblical teaching of divine providence. Check it out here if you have some time for reading this evening or in the week ahead: https://reformedreader.wordpress.com/2016/07/25/typology-providence-sovereignty/

Our Central Focus Upon the Lord

Reflections on the Psalms: Our Central Focus

By Paul A.

The Book of Psalms is situated in the very middle of the canon of Holy Scripture, just as worship of our Lord is to be the central focus of everything in our lives. The writers of the Psalms express a wide variety emotions and sentiments that range from worship and adoration of the Lord to laments and seeming despair to imprecatory prayers calling for God’s judgment against their enemies. But regardless of my current emotional state and the content of the individual songs, I have found the Psalms to always provide the same things – peace, encouragement, and focus from our worldly woes and cares put back upon the Lord where they belong.

In the Psalms we also discover that the Lord has provided the means for our worship to be found in the same place; the center of His revealed Word to us. Coming from an evangelical background where everything from hymns to contemporary songs were sung along with organs, pianos, and every form of sensual engagement from coloured spotlights to smoke machines, I find the simplicity of singing the Psalms with only the voices of His special beloved creatures stands in stark but beautiful contrast. Scripture says that nothing good comes from us, that all our deeds are as filthy rags. Pondering that, how can we possibly manifest worship to Him that would not only be pleasing to Him, but be authentic and orthodox, without stain or blemish? The answer is to use the gift that He has given us – His special revelation, which reveals Himself, His mind, His ways, and His very nature of being. When we sing the Psalms back to Him, we are absolutely certain we are singing truth, devoid of any theological error, imagination, or man-made presupposition. If we truly believe Scripture is sufficient to equip us unto all good works, then indeed God’s Holy Songbook is all we require to sing His praises. Just as the crowns awarded us will be cast down to Him before the throne, we likewise cast sacrifices of praise to Him by reflecting back what we know to be Holy. When we sing the Psalms, we come confidently to His throne with the only sacrifices of praise worthy of Him – His very Word.

On the Wisdom and Value of the Creeds of the Christian Church

Dr Michael Horton asks an important question over at the Core Christianity website:

If the Creeds of the Christian Church aren’t infallible (being without the possibility of error), then why on earth would we use them?

His answer is illustrative in many ways! In particular, Dr. Horton writes,

““I just believe the Bible” is no defense against cults, superstitions, apostasy, and heresy, since nearly every sect for the last two thousand years has claimed the Bible for support. The answer is not to make the church’s teachers infallible interpreters of Scripture. Nor to ignore the church’s teachers, but to have the humility to recognize that “iron sharpens iron” and that it takes the wisdom and insight of many interpreters over many centuries to help us to see our blind spots. Only a fool would ignore the accumulated wisdom of nearly twenty centuries.

Are the creeds infallible? No, but the universal confession of the whole church since its beginning, despite other divisions, is that the Bible clearly teaches that the affirmations we find in the Apostles’, Nicene, Chalcedonian, and Athanasian creeds are essential for our salvation.”

— Michael Horton, Core Christianity

Visit the Core Christianity website to learn more!

Photo by Gustavo Belemmi on Unsplash

The Ornamentation of the Preached Word

The letters to the churches in Revelation feature the refrain “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev 3:22). This is no accident.

The apostle Paul, writing to Timothy, explains “ the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it” (2Ti 4:17).

The same Paul asks “how are they to hear without someone preaching?” (Rom 10:14)

The congregation called by the voice of God gathers in expectancy, waiting for the sight of Christ to be revealed to them as they hear the shout of the archangel and the blast of a trumpet (1 Thess 4:15-17) on the Last Day.

Until that day, the Christian church is defined by the way in which it is to receive the Word: audibly through the preaching of the Word (Rom 10) and visibly/tangibly in the administration of the sacraments.

The ornamentation of the preached Word rests on the communion table that sits in the front of the House of God.

The visual enhancement of the preached Word is contained in the cup and the bread in this period of waiting for the return of Christ (Acts 1:11).

The adornment of the preached Word is the fruit it bears in the hearts and lives of believers in all stages of Christian maturity.

Photo by John Mark Arnold on Unsplash

Is Every Day of Your Life Filled With Screens?

As a thought experiment, think about the last five screens with images on them that you saw: what type of content was being communicated to you?

Business, advertising and entertainment are the realm of the screened image.

Scholars studying the field of online education are skeptical about screen-based education because of the association with aesthetic pleasure it creates in the mind of its audience.

One recent study observed, “because visual media are normally used in our culture to provide aesthetic pleasure, in the form of entertainment, the use of visual media in education tends to break down the distinction between education and entertainment.” (a)

The link between a medium and the messages it normally communicates must not be understated. (b) Presentation technologies are primarily employed in the business world and the world of entertainment. After all, business and entertainment are the two areas where screens are used most commonly; advertising, movies, sales pitches, and video games all feature projected images. The connotations these tools carry are varied for different people but there is certainly a common thread between the use of these technologies and the expectations that it creates in culture at large.

My point in this account is simple but I think it is profound: the waves of advertising and entertainment encountered in daily life are increasingly communicated via presentation technologies. (c) As a result, the decision to modify the practice of the church in corporate worship to include these presentation technologies is risking a lot for the marginal returns that come from it. (d)

What is the risk? Consider this analogy: if six days of the week are spent driving on the right side of the road, what would be the effect of switching to the left side of the road for one to two hours each Sunday? Using screens to take in advertising and entertainment throughout the week predisposes congregants to react with certain instinctive responses when screens are pressed into service as platforms for holy meditation and participation in worship. The visual 'seen' is always competing for attention with the 'heard'. A tool that carries the same DNA as the presentation technologies of the broader culture which have contributed to the decline of 'hearing' should be treated with utmost caution and ultimately avoided if possible. (e)

Resources

(a) Louis Tietje and Steven Cresap, “Hegemonic Visualism,” Radical Pedagogy (2005)
(b) Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium Is the Massage (New York: Bantam Books, 1967)
(c) I am not saying that I am opposed to presentation technologies outside of the context of corporate worship. As I continue to learn more about the effects of these technologies on the brain and the psyche I think it is wise for individuals to reflect on their own consumption habits.  In the context of corporate worship, I argue that it is unnecessary and detrimental to the basic principles of corporate worship that the church is bound to uphold.
(d) Pragmatic and financial returns must be judged as subordinate to the significant effects such a change might have on the piety and vitality of the church.
(e) Yes, it is possible to not put a screen in a church in the 21st century. Picture a projector screen in a monastery or another 'sacred' space. Screens are uniformly obtrusive and an intrusion of our own lust for technology in a space that should be timeless and conducive to meditation, listening, and corporate singing. For more resources on digital tech's dehumanizing impact, consult Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011).

Photo by Olu Eletu on Unsplash

Book Recommendation: Ordinary

Michael Horton's book Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World is a great read for every believer who is struggling to keep up with the demands of every new kid on the block with a new strategy to make us bolder and better Christians. 

I'd highly recommend Dr. Horton's message of finding life in the ordinary activities of the Christian life. We so easily neglect the most important means by which God builds our faith and nourishes our souls: His Word and the Sacraments (Baptism and the Lord's Supper). 

Here's an excerpt that identifies precisely what is the problem in our time:

“Commonly, the rhetoric of radical in our churches actually mirrors our culture, even when — no, especially when — it invokes the lingo of “countercultural,” “subversive,” “alternative,” “extreme,” and so forth. The likes of Athanasius, Augustine, Bernard, Luther, and Calvin sought to reform the church. But for centuries now radical Protestants have been trying to reboot, reinvent, start over, and reconstitute the real church of the true saints over against the ordinary churches.”

— Michael Horton, 'Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World'

Buy the book here

Read a helpful review of the book here

One of the Longest Psalms to Learn...

It was Charles Spurgeon who once said of Psalm 131, “it is one of the shortest Psalms to read but one of the longest to learn”. And he’s right, isn’t he?

We can pick this Psalm up and read it quite swiftly – and with just a few hours of practice we can have it committed to memory so that we can recite it at will. 

But to learn this way of living – this way of humbling ourselves before God – this way of Christian lowliness... of a will subdued to the will of God – that is a lifelong lesson. 

To simply sum up the psalm’s lesson, it is this: a believer rests with the greatest contentment in the Lord’s abiding love, without the grand boasting of those who are enemies of God.