Don't waste your life

"Only one life - 'twill soon be past
Only what's done for Christ will last"

View this clip of John Piper's sermon to hear a powerful message on this little text.

SCYC 2007

The Vang Gang spent 2 weeks in July at the Shetland Christian Youth Camp (SCYC) in Sumburgh, Shetland.

This year there were 3 children's camps running from Tuesday to Saturday and a youth weekend from Thursday to Sunday. The children's camps were fully subscribed with 80 campers each week. About 35 young people were at the youth weekend.

It was a great joy to be able to tell the children about God's plan of salvation at the meetings in the first 2 camps. In the 3rd camp, Graeme Paterson from Plains, Scotland, was responsible for the meetings and Paul Coxall from "our" assembly (Fernielea Gospel Hall) in Aberdeen spoke at the meetings at the youth weekend.

All four camps went well and we are thankful to God for His provisions and help for the camps. Our prayer is that many of the 275 or so young people who heard God's word will trust in the Lord Jesus for their salvation and live for Him.

This year was the 14th year that SCYC has had children's camps and, having been involved since the start, it's great to be able to look back and see how this work has grown and how God has blessed.

Two Prayers

I don't read a lot of poetry but I have an excellent compilation of Christian poems by James M. S. Tait called "Bells and Pomegranates". It was first published in 1946 and published again in 1985 with additional poems. JMS Tait was a well-known solicitor and preacher in Shetland. He was born in 1903 and died in 1980.

One of my favourite poems by JMS Tait is called "The Two Prayers" and is based on the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15.

The Two Prayers

Father, give me - Luke 15:12
Father...make me - Luke 15:19

'Give me' he prayed, the foolish, wilful boy,
He thought that but to have was to enjoy,
A broken, sobered man, robbed, hungry, bare,
'Make me' he prayed; and 'twas a wiser prayer.

Much wiser. My possessions may decay:
What I become can no one take away.
A man's true worth may be appraised the best
By what he was, not by what he possessed.

Grace-driven effort

An oxymoron (plural oxymora), according to en.wikipedia.org, is “a figure of speech that combines two normally contradictory terms. Oxymoron is a Greek term derived from oxy ("sharp") and moros ("dull"). Thus the word oxymoron is itself an oxymoron”. Examples of oxymora are “pretty ugly” and “deafening silence”. My favourite oxymoron is “Microsoft Works” – although arguably it’s not an oxymoron in it’s strictest sense!

“Grace-driven effort” may seem like an oxymoron to some people...I would disagree.

I agree that we are helpless sinners and that, as such, we are unable to save ourselves – only God can, and He does so because of His grace (Eph. 2:8-9). We have no involvement in our saving; we simply receive it by faith.

Having been saved by grace we continue to rely on God’s grace – we stand in it (Rom 5:2) and we should be strong in (2 Tim 2:1). But we must labour too.

“Let go and let God” is a phrase often seen on bumper stickers and t-shirts. It's a catchy phrase and on the surface, it seems sound too, but I find it rather misleading - and dangerous when taken to an extreme. The danger is that as Christians we abdicate responsibility and hand it over to God.

The apostle Paul had a very clear attitude in His life regarding his responsibility as a child of God: "I discipline my body and keep it under control" (1 Cor 9:27). But in disciplining and controlling his body Paul relied on the grace of God. In 1 Corinthians 15:10 he could say "by the grace of God I am what I am...I worked harder than any of them [the apostles], though it was not I, but the grace of God that is in me".

This is what we call grace-driven effort - and it is badly needed today. If you are a child of God, don't just sit and wait for God to change you and use you! Seek God diligently, pursue holiness, discpline your body and keep it under control - but do so realising that in yourself you can do nothing (John 15:5) and rest on God's grace to conform you more and more, day by day, into the likeness of His Son.

Don Carson said this about grace-driven effort:

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated

Chief...

...of sinners!

That is the title the apostle Paul gives himself - Chief of Sinners. Not the most prestigous title in the world I suppose but one that everybody should ascribe to themselves.

I'm reading a very good book just now by Jerry Bridges called The Discipline of Grace. In it Bridges emphasises the need for believers to see themselves as sinful.

Bridges lists four statements by made by the apostle Paul concerning his own sinfulness:

• I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle (1 Cor 15:9)


• I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, there dwells no good (Rom 7:19)


• I am the very least of all the saints (Eph 3:8)


• Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief (1 Tim 1:15)

Bridges points out that the statements are listed chronologically which is interesting. Note the "progress", so that in the beginning (Eph 3:8) Paul compared himself with an elite group of Christian men, and said of himself that he was the least of the apostles. In the end (1 Tim 1:15) Paul compared himself with sinners (i.e. everybody, for we are all sinners) and he saw himself as the chief, that is, the greatest or the foremost of them all - the greatest sinner of the lot!

This is spiritual progress - not that we think of ourselves as becoming better and more important - but that we become more and more aware of our sin. This may seem to be paradoxical, and it certainly flies in the face of modern psychology which encourages positive thinking (which isn't necessarily all bad) and the need for self esteem, but it's a sign of spiritual growth.

Paul did not wallow in his sinfulness though or use it as an excuse for sinning. What it did to Paul was that it saved him from self-righteousness and made him cast himself upon the grace of God.

"The problem with self-righteousness is that it seems almost impossible to recognise in ourselves. We will own up to almost any other sin, but not the sin of self-righteousness. When we have this attitude, though, we deprive ourselves of the joy of living in the grace of God. Because, you see, grace is only for sinners." (J Bridges)

William Carey, the pioneer missionary, had grasped this lesson, as evidenced in a letter to his son on his 70th birthday:

"I am this day seventy years old, a monument of Divine mercy and goodness, though on a review of my life I find much, for which I ought to be humbled in the dust; my direct and positve sins are innumerable, my negligence in the Lord's work has been great, I have not promoted his cause, nor sought his glory and honour as I ought, notwithstanding all this, I am spared till now, and am still retained in His work, and I trust I am received into the divine favour through Him."

Facelift

Having left my blog unattended since November 2006, it's now had a facelift and the intention is to put regular posts on my new blog (here's hoping!).

The picture above is of Koltur which is an island in the Faroe Islands, located to the west of Streymoy and to the north of Hestur. The total population of Koltur is 2 people and some 160 sheep! Koltur is one of 18 islands in the Faroes, 17 of which are inhabited - some, like Koltur, only by one family.