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Monday, April 26, 2010

Is our love for God "erotic"?

In our love for God, I believe it is easy to have an "eros" (or erotic) kind of love. Being caught up in the experience and awe, we are full of excitement and our desire for this experience becomes lustful and dangerous. The experience overshadows God.

It is so easy to be constantly seeking the "emotional high", the "movement of God", "the power", instead of understanding the true greatness of who God is, and trusting His character. We become in love with and addicted to some experience and not God, Himself. Just as one is more interested in the physical experience than the person.

But their is a deeper love, an "agape" love, that is interested only in God and not some idolized version of what we want or an "experience" we desire to have. We take Him for who He is and trust Him for who He says He is. It is coming to know (in the biblical sense) God, in a deep and full way. You don't need a "movement" of God or have to see some "power", or even to feel anything, because His character thoroughly satisfies you.

In the Bible, love is not a noun, the focus is not what we feel or an experience, but what we do. You can seek an experience or you can seek God.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Choosing a Wife/Beauty is Vain - Tim Conway




Men, if we all started treating beauty as vain, we would change the world. For us few, who will do this, we will be a strength to those around us.


    

Monday, April 5, 2010

Why we choose to sin. -- John Calvin

...we allow that man has choice and that it is self-determined, so that if he does anything evil, it should be imputed to him and to his own voluntary choosing. We do away with coercion and force, because this contradicts the nature of the will and cannot coexist with it. We deny that choice is free, because through man's innate wickedness it is of necessity driven to what is evil and cannot seek anything but evil. And from this it is possible to deduce what a great difference there is between necessity and coercion. For we do not say that man is dragged unwillingly into sinning, but that because his will is corrupt he is held captive under the yoke of sin and therefore of necessity will in an evil way. For where there is bondage, there is necessity. But it makes a great difference whether the bondage is voluntary or coerced. We locate the necessity to sin precisely in corruption of the will, from which follows that it is self-determined.
 
--John Calvin from Bondage and Liberation of the Will, pg. 69-70

Learning To Love Correction - Joshua Harris

Friday, April 2, 2010

Psalm 73

21 When my soul was embittered,
when I was pricked in heart,
22 I was brutish and ignorant;
I was like a beast toward you.
23 Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
you hold my right hand.
24 You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will receive me to glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

--Psalm 73