Sanctification

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The World We Made: Coming soon...

UPDATE: There’s been lots of interest in this podcast, with about 2000 listens from 30 countries and counting! If you haven’t subscribed yet, we’ve added a few links to make it easier for those of you who aren’t on iTunes, which is most of you. (Welcome non-Apple fanboys.) Don't miss an episode. Scroll down and subscribe now.

"These are the confessions of American Christians recovering from American Christianity. This is the world we made."

Warhorn Media is pleased to announce a new podcast hosted by Jake Mentzel and Nathan Alberson and featuring Tim Bayly. The World We Made is designed to help ordinary American Christians think through the difficult issues we face in our culture today. Season 1 is about homosexuality.

Over the course of the first season, we talk with Tim about how we went from having anti-sodomy laws in all 50 states (just 50 years ago) to where we are today. What are the changes Tim has seen in his lifetime? What exactly do they mean? What part did the culture play and what part did the church play? How are regular Bible-believing Christians supposed to respond? What has Tim learned as a pastor to help equip us for the challenge of ministering to men and women tempted by homosexuality?

These are the questions we'll be unpacking over the course of eight 20-minute episodes. We'll start out slow and easy, and things will pick up steam as we get closer and closer to the end. You won't want to miss it, so check out the trailer (above), and go ahead and subscribe now in iTunes or Android (or wherever you listen to your podcasts—Google Play Music, Stitcher, TuneInRSS feed) so you're ready when the first episode drops (July 17). 

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Teaching obedience to those struggling with their sexuality...

NotAshamed.jpg

I recently had a counseling appointment with a young inmate—a drug addict raised by drug addicts. His only sister is in jail. His nephew is dead. His mother is in jail, and his father died from a drug overdose. In jail, this story is not remarkable. The only thing that made this meeting somewhat unique was the timing. He had just been informed about his father's death. As he walked in the door, his eyes were still red from crying. The last relative he had "on the outside" was gone. 

There was no question in this young man's mind about where the path of his life was leading. He saw death and misery before him, and he hated it. However, two things still stood in his way of turning to Christ. First, he still wouldn't take responsibility for his sin, blaming others, blaming his situation, and ultimately blaming God. Second, he did not believe there was any hope for him to change...


Cleveland Browns OL Joe Thomas: 9,684 and counting...

Son Taylor forwarded the article to me. Good words  for Christians weary of the battle from offensive lineman Joe Thomas of the winless Cleveland Browns (named for my mother's high school's football coach in Massillon):

My mentality from the day I started playing sports was that you get up, you dust yourself off and you do it again. Some people lay on the ground after they get hurt and they say, "Boy, that hurts. I wonder if I'm hurt. I'd better get it checked out." That's not part of my thought process.

My mind is going to tell my body I can do this, and if my body can't do it and I fall to the ground, then you know it's time to get it checked out.  - Joe Thomas

Holiness is...


Stone Gate Ministries: pastoral care for sinners...

Harry Schaumburg and Brian Bunn invited a group of pastors and elders up to Port Washington, Wisconsin, this past week. Harry is the author of two classic books written to help Christians on the road of repentance for sexual sin. The books titled False Intimacy and Undefiled are an extension of the one-week Biblical intensive counselling program Harry provides...


Setting Captives Free repents of focus on sin and repentance...

The problem with my original writings was the focus on sin, the labeling of people according to their sin, the sharing and discussing of sin, and the constant reminders of the sin. This is Old Covenant law-oriented, problem-focused doctrine and not according to biblical truth, and it hurt many people to whom I’ve recently been apologizing.

- Mike Cleveland, announcing his repudiation of thirteen years of work with Setting Captives Free

One change in the past quarter-century that has been terribly destructive within the Church and Her households is the ubiquity of the internet through smartphones, tablets, and laptops. These tools have enabled the private consumption of horrendous moral filth and Christian men and (increasingly) women have found this wickedness almost irresistible. The percentage of young Christian men who have succumbed to internet fornication on a regular basis is likely close to ninety percent, and now women have joined men and are consuming thirty percent of the internet filth.

At Clearnote, we've given ourselves to working closely with men and women repenting of this sin. A critical part of our work with those repenting of this sin is that each man and woman has been required to enroll in an internet discipleship program called Setting Captives Free (SCF).

For this reason we were quite sad to be notified recently by several men of our congregation that SCF is now repudiating and will no longer be offering their former courses, including the Way of Purity (for heterosexuals who are struggling with sexual sin) and Door of Hope (for homosexuals in the same position). After a preliminary investigation, one of our elders wrote "it would appear [they] are watering down the gospel by shifting focus away from sin and the need to repent from it."

We contacted SCF to express our concern and this was their...


The Puritans, "gay Christians," and our identity in Christ...

I'm about halfway through Rosaria Butterfield's Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. This book is her second work after her popular personal testimony in The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey into Christian Faith. Her honest writing (she was born again after living in a lesbian relationship and working as a pioneer in the field of Queer Studies as a tenured profession of English) is helpful and humbling (particularly her exhortations to show hospitality and love to those in bondage to their sin). 

One aspect of her books that has encouraged me thus far is her obvious love for the writings of Puritan pastors such as Thomas Watson, John Owen, Richard Baxter, and Jonathan Edwards. Their voices help her writing and thinking avoid the presuppositions of modern psychologists and all their hellish deviancy on anthropology. There is a reason the Puritans are known as physicians of the soul: they believed Scripture's testimony about the deceptiveness of the heart, the depth of human depravity, and the radical power of Holy Spirit in the new birth and subsequent sanctification. They were masters of the Biblical doctrines of temptation, sin, repentance, and sanctification.

In our recent discussions of homosexuality here on this blog, I've often had the thought that those who are promoting the "gay celibate Christian" idea are intensely pessimistic...


How should the church approach homosexuality (VI): Who is exempt from pursuing marriage?...

[This post is sixth in a series (the firstsecondthirdfourth, fifth) working through Pastor Scott Sauls and Christ Presbyterian Church's "Same-Sex Attraction Forum."]

A major underlying premise of Christ Presbyterian Church's Same-Sex Attraction Forum was this: men and women who struggle with same-sex attraction cannot marry without being healed of that attraction. This premise is accepted without debate but, in reality, should be rejected. The assumption being made is that one's attractions are iron-clad and monolithic. Closer to the truth would be that most who struggle with same-sex attraction also find themselves to be sexually and romantically attracted to members of the opposite sex. That, you will find, to be the testimony of many homosexually tempted men and women. If that is the case, a refusal to pursue marriage is likely motivated by the same factors motivating many young men to live in their parents' basement well into their thirties: they don't want to bear the responsibility of a wife and children and the discipline of the marriage bed. 

To put it delicately, if a man can be sexually aroused by a woman even though he may have predominantly same-sex desires... 


It's all too difficult...

[Note: Original post on the Christ Church Cincy website written at my fathers suggestion and reposted here at his request.]

Ross Kaminsky, a radio personality in Colorado, recently received an email from a Christian man tempted by same sex attraction. As the email comes to its conclusion, this Christian man says, "...sodomy is a deviancy. The healthiest thing for me is when a wise man can warn me of the horror, perversion, and abomination of the practice, and save my soul..." Kaminsky responded by email, "I feel terrible that society or the Bible, which I call an old book, are making you feel terrible about yourself." After sharing this response on the air, he then added the following comment:


Brazil's passion and Germany's discipline...

Listening to the talking heads doing a postmortem on Brazil's epic loss to Germany last night, I was fascinated to hear former soccer heroes lampooning Brazil's "passion." They kept saying things like, "it takes more than passion to win a football game" and "Brazil's emotions came up short against Germany's discipline."

For years I've been embarrassed for all the Christian men who take every conceivable opportunity to announce to the world what they're passionate about. I'm waiting for one of them to tell me he's passionate in bed with his wife, but of course that is what is never said. Instead these men simper and coo about their great passion...


For those who are impatient...

Are you impatient? I am and I found this section of Gregory's Pastoral Care convicting and helpful:

(Admonition 10.) Differently to be admonished are the impatient and the patient. For the impatient are to be told that, while they neglect to bridle their spirit, they are hurried through many steep places of iniquity which they seek not after, inasmuch as fury drives the mind whither desire draws it not, and, when perturbed, it does, not knowing, what it afterwards grieves for when it knows. The impatient are also to be told that, when carried headlong by the impulse of emotion; they act in some ways as though beside themselves, and are hardly aware afterwards of the evil they have done; and, while they offer no resistance to their perturbation, they bring into confusion even things that may have been well done when the mind was calm, and overthrow under sudden impulse whatever they have haply long built up with provident toil. For the very virtue of charity, which is the mother and guardian of all virtues, is lost through the vice of impatience. For it is written, Charity is patient (1 Cor. xiii. 4). Wherefore where patience is not, charity is not...


"It shall not fasten its grip upon me."

By faith, will you join me in this prayer:

A Psalm of David. I will sing of lovingkindness and justice, To You, O LORD, I will sing praises. I will give heed to the blameless way. When will You come to me? I will walk within my house in the integrity of my heart. I will set no worthless thing before my eyes; I hate the work of those who fall away; It shall not fasten its grip on me. A perverse heart shall depart from me; I will know no evil. Whoever secretly slanders his neighbor, him I will destroy; No one who has a haughty look and an arrogant heart will I endure...


Lutherans masquerading as Reformed...

If you tired of the discussion under Craig French's post Tullian's therapeutic grace..., bear with me and read my comment just made at the bottom of that post's comments, on October 23 at 3:50 PM. And in that connection...


Is a believer's sanctification simply believing more in their justification...

In connection with the suppression of sanctification by endless repetition of the justification-by-grace-alone-through-faith-alone mantra so endemic within the Reformed church today, it's encouraging to receive notification of this conference to be held at Second Reformed Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis.