More Heat

The issues are different for us today from what Jonathan Edwards was addressing in the shortcomings or faulty views of the Great Awakening in his writings on the subject. So in quoting Edwards here, and in thinking of the need for more heat today, I'm thinking mainly not of how we have so much light (we don't), but of how we have so many other things in which we trust (e.g., programs, new initiatives, church expansion projects, committee work, etc.) that are ineffectual for bringing about the revival and reform needed in the church in America. Yes, and even those parts that we think healthiest. See if you can map Edwards' insight onto our current situation.

Here is Edwards on the need for heat more than light:

Though as I said before, clearness of distinction and illustration, and strength of reason, and a good method, in the doctrinal handling of the truths of religion, is many ways needful and profitable, and not to be neglected, yet an increase in speculative knowledge in divinity is not what is so much needed by our people, as something else. Men may abound in this sort of light and have no heat: how much has there been of this sort of knowledge, in the Christian world, in this age? Was there ever an age wherein strength and penetration of reason, extent of learning, exactness of distinction, correctness of style, and clearness of expression, did so abound? And yet was there ever an age wherein there has been so little sense of the evil of sin, so little love to God, heavenly-mindedness, and holiness of life, among the professors of the true religion? Our people don't so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their hearts touched; and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching that has the greatest tendency to do this (Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 4, Yale University Press, 387–388).

Our Only Comfort in Life and in Death

The Heidelberg Catechism is golden. We're teaching it to our children. And the
first question is the sweetest and most precious of them all. Here it is:

Question 1: What is your only comfort, in life and in death?

Answer: That I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that he protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

 —Mark A. Noll, ed., Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), 137.

True Loyalty to the Lord

Commenting on Dan. 1:8–16, Sinclair Ferguson reflects:

Some Christians are heroes in their daydreams only. The characteristic mark of such heroism is imagining ourselves as faithful on great and public occasions and in rarefied atmospheres when others will be impressed. In stark contrast, true faithfulness in Scripture is first exercised in small things and in private. If we fail there, any faithfulness we show in public will be hypocrisy, a performance for the crowd and not an expression of loyalty to our Lord.

 —Sinclair Ferguson, Mastering the Old Testament: Daniel (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1988), 38.

Trained in the Ways of Babylon

Commenting on Nebuchadnezzar's strategy of defeating Jerusalem, as recorded in Dan. 1:3–7, Sinclair Ferguson observes: Nebuchadnezzar "weakened Jerusalem's prospects by exiling the cream of its youth, and he prepared for the future by giving them a thoroughly Babylonian education. . . . Nebuchadnezzar was not the last leader to see the value of infiltrating the colleges and universities to find candidates for his future service" (Sinclair Ferguson, Daniel, 34).

Zoe Eden Wencel

So the Wencels discovered recently via ultrasound that another girl has joined our family. That makes us a family of six. Two boys and four girls. We don't yet know whether she, too, will have red hair, as do our other girls, Ariana and Grace. But we do know her name: Zoe Eden Wencel. She is now sixteen weeks old, and her due date is January 5, the year of grace 2019. And per her imaging profile, she's pretty stinkin' cute. 

Zoe is from the Greek of the New Testament and means “life.” It's the same word used when Jesus said: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (Jn. 14:6). It is also the Greek word used for Eve's name in Gen. 3:20 of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible). Adam, the text tells us, called his wife "Zoe" ("Life"), "because she is the mother of all the living." Eden originates in the Hebrew Scriptures and is reminiscent of the garden of God of old (Gen. 2:8; Isa. 51:3). There the Lord placed the mother of all the living, and there God walked with man in the cool of the day. 

Almost needless to say, we're grateful beyond words for another little life added to our clan. Praise God from whom all blessings flow! May the Lord impart to Zoe Eden the life of God, and bring her safely into his everlasting Eden. May he lead her all her days until she at last enters the great promised garden-city of the new heavens and new earth (Rev. 22:1–2), where fullness of joy and peace abound in the permanent presence of the glory of the One who sits on the throne, and of the Lamb. 

The Great Commission and Ministers of the Church

"The commission may have application to the church generally, but the commission belongs particularly to the disciples, and to all those who after them were called to bring the Word of God to the nations. In other words, this commission has primary application to the ministers of the church" (Waters, How Jesus Runs the Church, xxv).

Real Spiritual Leadership: Changing People, not Directing People

"The goal of spiritual leadership is that people come to know God and to glorify him in all that they do. Spiritual leadership is aimed not so much at directing people as it is at changing people. If we would be the kind of leaders we ought to be, we must make it our aim to develop persons rather than dictate plans. You can get people to do what you want, but if they don't change in their heart you have not led them spiritually. You have not taken them to where God wants them to be" (Piper, The Marks of a Spiritual Leader, 3).

Why Preaching is often Inneffectual

"Catechising is the best expedient for the grounding and settling of people. I fear one reason why there has been no more good done by preaching, has been because the chief heads and articles in religion have not been explained in a catechistical way" (Watson, A Body of Divinity, 5).

The Forgotten Demographic in the Church

With all the buzz about doing evangelism in the church today, it would be helpful if the church exercised a bit more insight and genuine neighbor-love instead of doing what is most comfortable and what boosts the right kind of numbers. This piece by Gene Veith points out the uncomfortable truth for many upwardly-mobile white egalitarian-leaning evangelicals with feminist assumptions: the most unchurched demographic is the white working class.

Well, let's develop church strategies to go after them. No? Why not? Doesn't love call for it?

Challenging Labels

"If a 'disability' really only becomes a problem in one setting—our factory-model K–12 system—I’d challenge that label" (Bauer, Rethinking School, 43).

Budgeting, Planning, and Packing Up Ready to Go

"Budget and plan for an ordinary span of years, but in spirit be packed up and ready to leave at any time" (J. I. Packer, Affirming the Apostles' Creed, 109).

We, Not Me

Commenting on Ecclesiastes 4, David Gibson says:

If you can live in this world in such a way that the person or people beside you—your friend, your spouse, your children, your brother, your sister, the people God has put in your path—are your waking concern and your dominant focus, then you will find happiness. If your head hits the pillow at night full of questions about how you might help and serve someone else, and how you can be a certain kind of person for them, then you will find a gladness and contentment that nothing else can match.

. . . I want you to know what the Preacher is not saying. You might expect him to say that if you live for others, then you'll be more spiritual. Or more godly. You'll be a growing Christian. It is certainly true that you will be all those things, but that is not the aspect of life that the Preacher is painting in this part of his book. You will be happier. The word he uses is "quietness" (v. 6). It simply means rest—peace of mind and calmness of soul. It's a word to capture the deep well-being of those who know their place in the world, content with the boundary lines of their life and able to enjoy the fruits of their labors with a cheerful heart. The way to arrive in that place of rest is to live for we, not me.

—David Gibson, Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in the Light of the End (Wheaton: Crossway, 2017), 65–66.

Zealous for God's Fame

"Zeal is a mixed affection, a compound of love and anger; it carries forth our love to God, and our anger against sin in an intense degree. Zeal is impatient of God's dishonour; a Christian fired with zeal, takes a dishonour done to God worse than an injury done to himself" (Thomas Watson, Body of Divinity, 16).