Gwen Smith

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
+10 internet points to anyone who builds this. -1,000 ethics points, but +10 internet points.

Monnnnnnnday

 One thing about me is I forget to take pictures when I'm around people.  We have been doing this monthly Fire Families gathering for a few months now.  Families rotate hosting fires on a monthly basis, the hosting family providing some sort of education, story or experience around fire.  It's been a really unique experience.  We took our turn this month and had a baked potato bar with potatoes that were cooked with wood. 

I usually don't look forward to the electricity bill arriving, especially since the prices have gone up so much and look like increasing even more. However, I wanted to see what my bill was because over the past months I made a few choices to lower it. I knew it would be lower and I wanted to see how much I'd saved.

You'll notice on my bill there are a couple of government rebates. One is the $175 cost of living rebate that most of us got and the other is the pensioner discount. But I'm looking at the electricity usage rather than the dollar cost here. I'm celebrating decreasing my usage from 300 kWh to 5 kWh.

I knew, on average, air conditioning/heating and cooling consumed about 40 percent of each electricity bill, so when I was here alone over winter, I chose to not use the air conditioning. I made myself comfortable with an extra layer of clothes, an over the knees electric blanket and an electric blanket on my bed. But it's not always the appliances you have in your home, it's how you use them that makes the difference. All the little things like turning off lights when not in use, washing up by hand when there are only a few dishes, not having appliances on standby, always washing a full load in the dishwasher and washing machine - all this became part of my normal housework. One other change was I went from using our appliances at night on the old solar system because our feed-in tariff was 44 cents and it was cheaper for us to sell to the grid during the day. Now I use our appliances as soon as the sun hits the roof and I'm using solar energy generated here instead of energy from the grid. When the sun goes down all my cooking, sewing and cleaning have been done and I might just have a solo light or the radio on. My choices have made an impact on what I pay for electricity and saved a lot of carbon emissions.

I hope you to see that there are things you can do to decrease costs at home and all it takes is for you to make your particular choice and stick to it. I know many of you won't be able to do it even if you want to because you have family members who come home late and need to eat dinner, children who have to do homework and those who relax in front of the TV for entertainment.  But if you can't do it now, you can do it when your family grows older and you're in a new season of life.  

For every thing there is a season.

This is the Australian Government's Guide to Sustainable Homes. Lots of good information here.

There are probably a few things I've forgotten to write about here but one thing I want to add is to wash all your clothes in cold water.  If you have greasy work clothes or badly stained items, wash in cold water, don't overload the machine and add a scoop of oxybleach to the wash. (I think the Vanish Oxy Advance brand is the best for this). I always keep an eye open for their half price specials at Woolworths and only buy it then. 

Whoever restrains his words has knowledge,
and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding.
Proverbs 17:27

This verse hit hard during my personal devotions this week. As a pastor, my whole life is wrapped up in words. Turns out that’s not the safe vocation every mom wants for their little boy. 

Words, being one of the most powerful goods in the world, are necessarily one of the most dangerous tools we can access. Although they come across pretty common and easygoing, they’re often much sharper than we think. In my workshop I have several chisels that look an awful lot like screwdrivers. More than once I’ve had to remind my kids and even myself that they’re sharper than they look. Such are words.

We shouldn’t be afraid of them, just wise about them. After all, the “lips of the righteous feed many.” (Pro. 10:21) Wisdom and knowledge, according to the verse above, work together to restrain words. Wisdom doesn’t keep us silent, but makes sure our words head in the right direction to do some good. Again, chisels are great tools but sharp. Their sharpness is part of their power. Rather than being so afraid of their sharpness, the craftsman simply has to use much more restraint when working with chisels in order to use them for their best.

So this isn’t a post to get you to stop posting on facebook or join a “silent order” of monks. Rather, it’s just a friendly reminder that those things coming out of your mouth and out of your fingers are sharper than you think. Use with care and restraint, praying for God to bless many through your words.

Have you ever tried to resist the inevitable?  I do this whenever I sit down to eat.  No matter how much I try to avoid it, my superlative skills in unintentionally creating social awkwardness will kick in, and some of my food will end up on me rather than in me.  Sometimes I think I should purposely dump the contents of my plate on my lap as soon as I sit down, just to kill the anticipatory tension.  Either way, wearing my food is an unpleasant inevitability.  But have you ever tried to resist something that is inevitable, but also absolutely wonderful – in fact, the very best thing that could ever happen to you?  I have, and if you are a Christian, you have, too.     

Hold that thought and think with me of the scene described in John’s gospel, chapter 2, where Jesus cleanses the Temple in Jerusalem. The Son of God decides to make a powerful, public statement about who he really is, and what he really came to do.  He sees that money-changers have set up shop in the Temple, obstructing the worship of his heavenly Father.  So he storms into the temple, violently expelling its unauthorized occupants.  “Do not make my Father’s house a house of trade!” he demands as he drives out those who were preventing his Father’s praise.  As his disciples watch their Savior display his righteous indignation, they remember a line from the 69^th Psalm: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

Back to the question about resisting the inevitable:  Imagine observing this scene along with the disciples and seeing someone run in after Jesus in an attempt to stop his cleansing work.    It’s hard to imagine a more foolish endeavor than the effort to prevent the incarnate God from protecting the purity of the holiest place on the planet.  Imagine someone who knows full well who Jesus is standing in front of one of the tables which Jesus means to overturn, and saying to him:  “No, Lord.  Not this table.  I like this one; it’s mine.  It belongs here.  You won’t take this one without a fight.  In fact, this is my house, and you will abide by my rules.  You can do what you want with the other stuff in this place, but this table is mine.  You can go thus far, but no further.”  Who would do such a thing?  I would.  You would.

We do that, daily, in our words, thoughts, and deeds.  When we sin, and especially when we delight in doing so, when we cling to a favorite sin despite our knowledge that the Almighty Savior means to rid us of it, we are in effect pitting our zeal against his, our passion to sin against his passion to free us from its presence.   

Think of what Jesus’ fierce passion for His Father’s house means for you who know him as your Lord and Savior!  After all, you are the true Temple of the living God.  You are his Father’s house.  Zeal for your holiness consumed him.

The Apostle Peter writes in 2 Peter 2, “you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”  (See in 1 Corinthians 6 Paul’s expression and application of the same truth).  The individual stones, believers, are built together to comprise a spiritual house, a temple, for the offering of our lives individually and corporately to God through our great High Priest Jesus Christ.  You (singular and especially plural) are the dwelling place of the living God, the place where He abides in love and grace and galvanizing power.  When you gather with other believers to worship the Lord, wherever you are, you together are the sanctuary!  You (all) are the object of Christ’s consuming passion, the people whom he has redeemed to host the Holy Spirit and to bring his Father praise.

Jesus makes it clear in John 2 that he means to rid his Father’s house of unauthorized occupants.  His protective zeal must inspire and inform our own.

For serious athletes, the expression “Not in our house!” is incendiary.  Zeal to protect home court ignites a basketball team into impassioned play.  Errors might be made in the game, but extra effort is expended to ensure that “nothing is left on the floor,” that at the end of the contest there will be no regrets due to anyone’s giving anything less than superlative effort in front of the home crowd.  Should we Christians not have at least as much passion in our effort against sin, to expel by God’s grace the unauthorized occupants of his house?  When we are tempted, and especially when we find ourselves delighting in that which our Savior means to overturn in our hearts, we must say with him:  “Not in my Father’s house.”

In our day, Jesus uses his moral law to seek out and expose the illegitimate tenants we’ve allowed to reside in the temple of the Spirit (Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5, Matthew 5-7).  As you read this entry, what are the tables in front of which you are standing as you see Christ closing in on them by way of his Word?  For what sin’s sake are you resisting the inevitable, wonderful, freeing, cleansing work of the living Christ?  To borrow and turn Abraham Kuyper’s famous phrasing, is there even a square inch of God’s temple about which you are saying: “This is mine!”?

We know how our zeal to protect sin plays out.  The “square inch” in effect spreads out to cover the whole house.  All our efforts are expended to keep that rebellious resident in place.  Whatever sin we allow to set up shop in our Father’s house eventually acts like it owns the place.  What a waste of precious time and passion it is to protect pet sins!

As the Lord came on the scene that day in Jerusalem, surely it was not the first time he noticed the merchants in his Father’s house.  That fact should remind us that the Lord is patient, and he is kind.  But we must not interpret his patience as passivity in the face of our sin, much less abuse that patience by treating it as permission to sin.  Let Jesus’ actions that day remind us in this day that he will act, out of zeal for the Temple, out of love for those who are his Father’s house.

If we don’t imagine ourselves standing obstructively in front of certain pet sins, we do perhaps imagine that we can hide those sins from the Lord, or at least from fellow believers.  But because we are together the Temple, there really is no such thing as isolated, individualized sin. Cancer may be localized, but it drains the life of the whole body.  A threat in one room of the house endangers the whole household.  True, our brothers and sisters in Christ may not know about the particular sins which we’re trying to keep hidden from them, but are family members safer because they do NOT know that an intruder is in a nearby room?  And is it reasonable to trust an intruder to be on good behavior, to steal only within the small section of the house into which we’ve allowed him?  As the Puritan Thomas Watson put it:  “Is not he a fool who will believe a temptation before a promise?”

The Lord has promised his powerful presence as we battle sin.  He is always with us by the Spirit, and he strengthens us through his Word, through his intercession for us as we cry out to the Father in times of temptation, and through the other spiritual stones whom he has redeemed and placed beside us in his Father’s house.

Sometimes as we try to step away from the sinful stations we’ve set up in the Lord’s house, we feel cemented to the floor.  Our desire to please the Lord battles our desire to protect our sin, and we’re spiritually paralyzed.  This is when gentle, positive pressure from the living stones surrounding us is so necessary.  The author of Hebrews writes in chapter 10:  “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works …” It is vital for the living stones to encourage one another, to be there for one another in prayer and counsel.  And it is especially vital to be there with one another weekly to engage in that most essential delight and duty of the Christian life:  corporate public worship.  After all, we are the Temple!  As such, we must not “ … give up meeting together, as is the habit of some …”  In this setting especially, we proclaim and celebrate the success of our Savior’s zeal. We hear from him and pray and sing to him.  We call upon him to apply more fully his finished work of redemption by ridding his Father’s house of even more unauthorized occupants.  He promises his powerful presence among us especially as we worship him as the corporate body of Christ (2 Corinthians 6:14ff).  And every week we meet for worship, we are one Sabbath closer to the day when Christ’s cleansing work will be completed (Hebrews 10:25, Philippians 1:6, Ephesians 1:4).

Some two thousand years ago our Savior came suddenly to the Temple (Malachi 3:1).  And on the day appointed, in the time it takes for an eye to twinkle, he will apply to the true Temple the fullness of that which his zeal has already accomplished (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).  Before that day, let us not try to resist the effects of his redeeming work. Let’s eagerly invite those effects into our lives now.  The full application of our salvation is inevitable.  And is that not wonderful?

I don’t know if I’m allowed to write what I’m about to, but I will anyway. I’m sometimes disappointed by the way many of us identify ourselves as “Christians.” Can I say that? No, it’s not because I’m seeking some existential freedom from labels. I happily own all kinds of different -isms for myself. Nor is it because I think “Christian” is an unbiblical word. On the contrary, it was in Antioch “the disciples were first called Christians” (Acts 11:26). Rather, it’s because I have the sneaking suspicion that many of us have reduced this term “Christian” to identify ourselves only in relation to Christ. To be sure that’s incredibly important. Our union with Christ is the backbone of salvation. But I wonder, when you identify yourself as a “Christian,” is there a self-conscious Trinitarianism behind that label?

The doctrine of the Trinity isn’t a marginal or secondary doctrine appended to our belief in Christ, as if we can remain neutral to the Father or the Spirit. One writer was so bold as to assert, “Between the Trinity and Hell there lies no other choice.” Is he wrong? I don’t think so. A non-triune God is not the God of the Bible but a mere idol, and “Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them” (Psalm 115:5). A biblical faith is a Trinitarian faith. Yet, remarkably, as Robert Letham observed, “For the vast majority of Christians, including most ministers and theological students, the Trinity is still a mathematical conundrum, full of imposing philosophical jargon, relegated to an obscure alcove, remote from daily life.”

Now, let me be sympathetic for a moment. I understand the difficulties of the Tri-Unity of God. It’s easy to get baffled by all the vocabulary: being, person, consubstantial, perichoretic, begottenness, procession, etc. I understand that there is no good illustration to picture the Trinity. Sorry! Water, egg, clover, etc all end in an actual denial of the Trinity. I understand the complexity of moving from the One to the Three and the Three to the One. I think it was Augustine who said there is no subject that is more laborious than an inquiry into the Trinity. Thankfully, we’re not saved on account of perfect vocabulary, perfect illustrations, or perfect comprehension. We’re saved by being drawn into a living and vital relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But the difficulty doesn’t negate its importance or practicality. As Timothy Ware wrote, “The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not a piece of ‘high theology’ reserved for the professional scholar, but something that has a living, practical importance for every Christian.” Let me offer seven practical reasons for the Trinity:

1. The Trinity is central to our Christian identity. Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). To be baptized into something is to be identified with–to be named in relation to (see 1 Corinthians 10:2). As disciples we’re named into the Triune God. John Calvin said, “In everything we deal with the triune God and never one of the three persons alone. Our relationship with God is therefore simultaneously a relationship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

2. The Trinity fuels our evangelism. Again, Jesus’ words are to go into all the world and make disciples of the Trinity. One writer said, “In this doctrine is summed up the new way of thinking about God, in the power of which the fishermen went out to convert the Greco-Roman world.”

3. The Trinity impacts the way we worship. Paul wrote, “For through him [Jesus] we both have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians 2:18). Even while all three persons are equal in power and glory, there is a certain order: to the Father through the Son by the Spirit. Such worship is expressed well by Paul in Ephesians 1:3-11, “Blessed be the Father…the Son…and the Spirit.”

4. The Trinity comforts us in our sorrow. When Jesus told his disciples he was going away and their hearts were troubled, the comfort he brings is through this doctrine of the Trinity, “Do you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” (John 14:10), “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me,” (John 15:26), and “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). Sinclair Ferguson wrote, “If anything could underline the necessity of Trinitarianism for practical Christianity, this must be it!”

5. The Trinity offers us a scope for our unity. Jesus prayed, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one” (John 17:22-23). That’s what our “fellowship” or “communion” in the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 13:14) is supposed to be like.

6. The Trinity measures to us the love of Jesus. Again, Jesus said, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love” (John 15:9). No wonder Paul prayed that we might “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God” (Ephesians 5:19).

7. The Trinity provides us with an example. Though the Son is equal with the Father and with him and the Spirit is to be worshiped, nevertheless, for the sake of our salvation the Son submitted himself to his Father. And Paul commends this as our example, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:5-7).

This short list demonstrates just how practical the Trinity is to our day-to-day living. What we need so desperately in our own day are self-consciously Trinitarian disciples. I think the next time someone asks me how I identify myself, I’ll happily own the label “Christian,” but will be quick to add, “And by that, I mean Trinitarian.”

“The design of God in our cancer is not to train us in the

rationalistic, human calculation of odds. The world gets

comfort from their odds. Not Christians. Some count

their chariots (percentages of survival) and some count

their horses (side effects of treatment), but we trust in

the name of the Lord our God (Psalm 20:7). God’s design

is clear from 2 Corinthians 1:9: “We felt that we had

received the sentence of death. But that was to make us

rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”

The aim of God in our cancer (among a thousand other

good things) is to knock props out from under our hearts

so that we rely utterly on him.”

-John Piper-

Don’t Waste Your Cancer

In this podcast it was our pleasure to speak with Dr. Rich Holdeman, pastor of Bloomington Reformed Presbyterian Church.  Having been diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, Dr. Holdeman explores the challenges that come with battling cancer, as well as the grace and comfort the Lord gives His own during such trials.

Interview length: 43:27

Download

It is sometimes the case that significant details are shared after the end of an interview.  Instead of trying to splice those comments into the main body of the conversation, it seemed best to simply add another five minute file here.  Let’s call it bonus material.  

Download