Here’s one more serious New Years’ Resolution:

Resolved, To spend time in God’s word every day with my whole family.

Our family ritual for the past few years has been for daddy to make waffles and lead a family devotional every Saturday morning. We have a great time together reading a passage out of a childrens’ Bible, talking about the implications of this passage for life on the playground and in the backyard, then we pray for each other and the people we know. We talk about the problems we’re facing (including sins in our lives that might have been brought up by the passage), and lay them in God’s hands to deal with. We remind ourselves that we depend on him for everything.

I love these times, and I want more of them. So our family is going to be doing a daily devotional together using this Bible reading plan. Every weeknight at dinner, we’ll go through the usual discussion topics (”what was your favorite part of the day? what was your least favorite part of the day?”) then we’ll spend 5 or 10 minutes discussing a small part of God’s word.

The challenge will be to keep this from becoming a dead ritual, since reading more of the Bible doesn’t necessarily make us more devoted to God. That’s why we’ll be taking it slow, and praying a lot.

As my man Spurgeon once said, “One bit of Bible prayed over, and bedewed with the Spirit, and made alive, though it be only a short sentence of six words, will profit you more than a hundred chapters without the Spirit.”

The last thing in the world I want is for my kids to ever say, “Oh no, Mom and Dad are hauling out the Bible again.” So we’ll be praying for God to keep this time fresh, relevant, and alive.

Through a sermon I heard this week at Desert Springs Church (highly recommended if you ever find yourself in Albuquerque), I was reminded of some of the resolutions made by Jonathan Edwards, considered to be the brightest theologian in American history:

• Resolved, Never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.
• Resolved, Never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.
• Resolved, To examine carefully and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt of the love of God; and so direct all my forces against it.
• Resolved, After afflictions, to inquire, what I am the better for them; what good I have got by them; and, what I might have got by them.

Here’s the amazing thing: Edwards made these resolutions and many more when he was only 19 years old. They were responses to experiences he had, reflecting on what God had taught him. When I was his age, the best I could churn out was a handful of half-plagiarized political science papers.

That realization depressed me for a few seconds, but then it motivated me. I’ve never made New Years’ Resolutions before, but why not start now? There are a few experiences God has given me over the past year that motivate me to do things differently in the future. Here’s one:

Resolved, Never to allow my integrity to fail, even to the smallest degree, and even if I’m being dishonest just by being silent.

This is one I actually resolved a few weeks ago. I was getting a safety check on our truck, and after the mechanic was done, he started putting the stickers on the bumper. As he was doing it he said, “By the way, one of your reverse lights is out. Just get it fixed sometime, and I’ll let it slide.”

I should have said, “No. Take the stickers off, and fix it, and then you can pass me.”    …    Instead, I just said, “Uh huh.”

Five seconds later, the manager came out of his office. This mechanic was suddenly sweating. “Oh no. If he sees you back out of the parking stall with your busted reverse light, I could get fired. You’ve gotta lie for me. Say it worked when we tested it, and it must have gone out just now.”

Because of my failure to act with perfect integrity in the first place, suddenly I was being asked to tell a bald-faced lie to cover up a deception I had benefited from. Are you kidding me?

I swallowed hard and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t do that. We just need to get it fixed and deal with the consequences.”

More resolutions to come…

Today we celebrated the incarnation of Jesus, the mind-blowing event in which God took on human flesh. David Mathis quotes Doug Wilson about why that matters for us:

Jesus Christ became a human being, but He did not do this as temporary exercise. He was not “slumming” for thirty-three years, only to return afterwards to His old pre-incarnate state. He became a man in order to be our high priest—so that there would be a man praying for us at the right hand of the Father—and He continues to occupy this office, and will occupy it forever. “It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Rom. 8:34b).

Christ is our high priest continually (Heb. 7:3). This means that the second person of the triune God became a man forever. God is clearly up to something that goes far beyond anything we might be able to imagine. But among other things, this means that if God has invested Himself in this way in the future of the human race, it follows that the future of the human race must be stupefyingly glorious.

Our church is reading chronologically through the Bible in 2009 to get the overall story of God’s mission to humanity. Seeing his plan unfold over the last 5,000 years will give you a good idea of what his plan might be for you today.

This is a Bible-reading plan that’s almost procrastination-proof: you’ll read a chapter a day for five days a week, with two days to catch up. You can view the plan and sign up to receive daily study questions (along with a 5-minute daily devotional for families that relates to the day’s assigned chapter) by email or RSS-feed here.

In addition, our family will also be going through the Jesus Storybook Bible at bedtime. This is a very unique children’s Bible in that it isn’t just telling exciting stories with about great human heroes (although the stories are exciting). It’s showing how these stories point to the one true Hero. As the blurb says, “There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them.”

Join us!

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Jeremy Pryor believes churches need to “Bring Back the Prayer Meeting.” I couldn’t agree more. We have a monthly night set aside for prayer, and I’d like to make it even more often. If you’re a Harborite, our next Second Saturday prayer & worship night is January 10th. Here’s Jeremy’s thinking:

In the conversation about what needs to be restored to the church I can’t stop thinking about our need to bring back the prayer meeting. If you list what gatherings Christians typically attend today in order of consistency and frequency it might go something like -

1. weekly worship service
2. small group
3. ministry team or committee meeting
4. second teaching meeting sunday night sermon etc.
5. prayer meeting

When I read the New Testament regarding the frequency of gatherings it seems to go something like this -

1. the prayer meeting
2. discipleship training
3. body gathering
4. the lord’s supper love feast
5. city worship

From an article in Christianity Today by Sam Storms:

The biblical fact of the matter is that, ultimately speaking, God has no need of us.

I know this cuts deeply into our sense of self-importance, but look closely at what the apostle Paul said to the Athenian philosophers: “He is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). In another text, Paul extols God precisely because “from him and through him and to him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). If God already owns everything and is in himself perfectly complete, what do we think we could possibly add to his already immeasurably sufficient being? The truth is that the God of the Bible is the kind of God whose greatest delight comes not from making demands but from meeting needs.

Yet, tragically, many Christians exhaust themselves in trying to shore up what they think are deficiencies in God. Their approach to the Christian life is to give to God what they evidently think he lacks. But God is most honored not when we strive to bolster what we mistakenly think is his diminishing supply, but when we come to him humbly to receive from his mercy and goodness what only he can provide.

Read the whole thing.

In this rant about how newspapers are firing film critics and replacing them with celebrity gossip columnists, Roger Ebert complains about the celeb obsession that’s gripped our culture:

The Associated Press… has been hit with some cancellations lately, and no doubt has been informed what its customers want: Affairs, divorces, addiction, disease, success, failure, death watches, tirades, arrests, hissy fits, scandals, who has been “seen with” somebody, who has been “spotted with” somebody, and “top ten” lists of the above. (Celebs “seen with” desire to be seen, celebs “spotted with” do not desire to be seen.)

The CelebCult virus is eating our culture alive, and newspapers voluntarily expose themselves to it. It teaches shabby values to young people, festers unwholesome curiosity, violates privacy, and is indifferent to meaningful achievement. One of the TV celeb shows has announced it will cover the Obama family as “a Hollywood story.” I want to smash something against a wall.

There’s a strange mix of desires that drives us to consume more and more celebrity news. We’re fascinated by the rich and famous and infamous. We love to imagine ourselves in their $5000 shoes and $20 million cribs. But we’re also jealous of the pampered lives they lead and the undue attention they receive (especially the celebrities who aren’t famous for their acting ability or sports skills, they’re just famous for being famous), so we love to see them suffer and make fools of themselves.

So is this really the kind of stuff we want to be thinking about all the time? The well-known verse from Philippians 4 is relevant here: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

No, I don’t think this is a command to float through life like Kenneth the NBC Page, blissfully ignorant of all the ugly sin that happens outside the church walls (”I don’t drink hot liquids of any kind - that’s the Devil’s temperature”). I think it’s a reminder of the way God progressively replaces the ugly sin in our own hearts with truth, honor, justice, purity, and so on.

How does he do that? By helping us find satisfaction in Christ alone. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice” it says earlier in Philippians 4. When we fully experience that, then the hollow thrills of things like celebrity obsession seem boring by comparison.

(via)

As you should know, Black Friday is the most hallowed holy day of our Religion of More Stuff. It marks the beginning of our 30-day Feast of Consumption, which has its origins in an ancient and largely forgotten holiday marking the birth an obscure Jewish baby.

During this year’s celebration, worshipers who had suffered in the recent anti-consumeristic persecution known as the Financial Crisis were whipped into a spiritual frenzy at a local temple, inspired by the promises found in our sacred texts, The Black Friday Ads.

Glass doors and a 34-year-old temporary maintenance worker stood between them and the inner sanctuary of the temple where the deity offered half-price George Foreman grills and Hannah Montana dolls.

Desperate to be blessed, the people broke the doors down and killed the temp worker:

“He was bum-rushed by 200 people,” co-worker Jimmy Overby, 43, told the Daily News. “They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too. … I literally had to fight people off my back.”

After killing the man, the crowd continued its devoted worship. They rushed into the temple, received their gifts, and took their offerings to be consecrated by the high priests at the checkout stands.

Lord Jesus, please save us from our celebration of your birth.

This week you’ll take a quick break from the football and the gorging and the Black-Friday-ad-scanning to recite a quick prayer of thanks at the dinner table. If you’re a little more ambitious, you might even have each person around the table say what they are thankful for this year.

You’ll say things like “Family.” … “Health.” … “A nice place to live.”

All good things, and all worthy of gratitude to God. But if you want to shake things up a little bit at the dinner table, try saying “The fact that I’m not dead.”

Romans 6:23 says the only thing we’ve earned in life is death. Which means that anything we get in life besides death comes purely from the grace of God. Air. Food. Water. All these things are blessings from God, “for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45).

Still, these blessings can only stave off death for a few decades. The one thing we should truly be thanking God for this week is the way he enables us to beat sin, suffering, and death for good.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Last night I watched a PBS special called The Bible’s Buried Secrets. It told the story of Israel’s transition from a polytheistic people (worshiping Canaanite gods alongside the one true God) to a purely monotheistic people.

While I had to endure the standard academic explanation of the Bible’s origins (i.e. it was embellished and possibly even invented by priests in the sixth century), there was one intriguing thing that caught my attention.

Archaeologists have found more than a thousand Canaanite idols in Jewish homes and burial sites around Israel that date from before 600BC. They haven’t found a single idol in Israel that dates after 600BC.

Guess what happened around 600BC? The Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem and the forced exile of the Jews. This horrific event was what finally killed off the tendency of God’s people to rely on things besides God for their security and prosperity. When they returned to Israel, they worshiped God alone.

When the next crisis hits your life, you don’t need to ask God why he would allow it to happen. He’s killing off one of your idols.

In Sunday’s sermon from Genesis 31, I spoke briefly about Laban and Rachel’s dependence on idols to bring them security and comfort in life. Rachel had seen firsthand the way God protected and blessed her, but she still didn’t trust him enough to protect them on the long trip across the desert to Canaan. So she stole her father’s idols for the journey.

I made the connection between the little chunks of metal they depended on, and the little chunks of metal we rely on for survival: the cell phones, laptops, and TV’s that keep us connected, informed, and entertained.

But idolatry goes much further than physical objects. Justin Childers offers this simple test to determine what you worship more than God:

Here is one question to help you identify idols in your heart today:

Fill in the blank: “If only _________, then I would be happy, fulfilled, and secure.”

(via Transforming Sermons)

C.J. Mahaney writes this:

I forget now who first brought these points to my attention. But the realization that I could be simultaneously busy and lazy, that I could be a hectic sluggard, that my busyness was no immunity from laziness, became a life-altering and work-altering insight. What I learned is that:

* Busyness does not mean I am diligent
* Busyness does not mean I am faithful
* Busyness does not mean I am fruitful

Recognizing the sin of procrastination, and broadening the definition to include busyness, has made a significant alteration in my life. The sluggard can be busy—busy neglecting the most important work, and busy knocking out a to-do list filled with tasks of secondary importance.

(via)