I love the global nature of blogging. I can read the thoughts and works of others around the world. I can be encouraged by what they write. I can be saddened by what they write. I can be built up and have my prior belief systems challenged and strengthened. And there are times when I read something, it brings a deep sense of conviction to repent.
During my morning tip toe through the blogs, I came across two rebukes that spoke deep into my hear. Both from what Dave Black wrote.
The first was
Beware the cult of the speaker!
Our culture, methinks, places far too much stock in the opinions of so-called “experts.” The only opinion that matters is God’s. Two weeks ago in chapel our president Danny Akin put it this way: “I don’t care what you say. I don’t even care what I say. The only thing that matters is the Word of God.” No truer words were ever spoken.
If you are a public speaker, never forget the words of the greatest man who ever lived (sans Jesus): “He must increase, but I must decrease.” The purpose of John the Baptist’s ministry was to point others to Christ and away from himself. He did not form his own little following. (Others formed the “John the Baptist Society,” but long after John was dead.) He didn’t set up his own 501(c)3. Just as the light of the morning star fades in the light of the rising sun, John was content to become nothing so that Christ might become everything.
Within this framework I was convicted of my own cockiness in regards to the way I felt when my blog hit 118 hits on the one day, which I posted about the other day. It’s not about point scoring and notches notched up on the gun handle. It is all about Christ and making him known. I take Dave’s warning seriously that indeed, I must decrease and Christ increase. And so to those who read my blog, I do ask your forgiveness.
The second area of conviction came about in regards to my nose getting out of joint about what John Piper said. I stand by my conviction that he was in the wrong about what he said about the “flavour of Christianity.” Brother Dave writes in regards to Masculine Christianity:
In all charity, and with no desire to reflect unkindly upon any Christian, I would point out that there are few pastors in the church today who possess such a depth of affection, such a breadth of compassion and pity, such sacrificial love. Nothing under the sun can be as dry and tedious as “church work” without charity. No wonder we grow weary in well-doing. Without genuine compassion for people we are shorn Sampson’s on a treadmill. How many of our church meetings can be accounted for without the love of the Holy Spirit!
Dave also links to a paper he wrote With a Mothers Love! Telling us to read it if we dare!
Dave addressed the issue in such gentleness and wisdom. His love touched my heart. It showed addressed and revealed my own self righteousness which had rose to the surface, causing me to write things about a fellow brother in Christ, that perhaps I shouldn’t have done so in the ways I did. And so again I ask your forgiveness for writing in a manner that set myself up as being righteous. How true it is, that we walk a fine line of honouring each other and dishonouring ourselves when we dishonour another.
We are all called to be quick to listen and be slow to speak. There are times I need to truly heed this call and not be so hasty to type and or to speak.
Trinitarian Dance 