Choose to Give Thanks
Happy Thanksgiving to all Buzzard Blog readers! I’m thankful for how you read and interact with what I write here. It’s a great blessing and help to me.
This Thanksgiving I’m meditating on and putting into action Psalm 9:1-2
I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.
Note the four-fold resolve in this Psalm:
I will give thanks
I will recount
I will be glad
I will sing
Giving thanks isn’t automatic for many of us, especially if our circumstances are difficult. Here we see the Psalmist resolving, choosing, to give thanks. This Thanksgiving, follow the four “I wills” of this Psalm: give thanks to the Lord, recount his wonderful deeds, be glad in God, and sing praises to his name.
Give thanks.
Recount.
Be glad.
Sing.
Why? Because God is God and he’s treated you better than you deserve.
Even if you’re not feeling particularly thankful or glad today, follow the ancient Psalm and soon your feelings will also follow.
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Best Books of 2009
In time for Thanksgiving, here’s my Best Books of 2009 list. This isn’t a list of favorite books published in 2009. This is a list of books I read in 2009 that I found the most profit or pleasure in. Below each book is a sentence summing up what I gained from reading the book. See also: Best Books of 2008.
Add to the list, what was your favorite read in 2009?
1. Trusting God by Jerry Bridges
God is sovereign, wise, and good—he can be trusted completely.
2. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
Your body was designed to run, so stop jogging and start running.
3. Just Do Something by Kevin DeYoung
God’s will is clear: love God and do as you please.
4. Blink by Malcom Gladwell
Sometimes you should quit thinking so much and just trust your initial instincts.
5. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount by Martyn Lloyd Jones
Jesus presents an entirely new framework for living life (MLJ’s five sermons on worry from Matthew 6 are worth the price of the book).
6. Adrenaline and Stress by Archibald Hart
You need to understand how stress works and how you work in order to do your best work (Hart’s chapter on sleep is worth the price of the book).
7. The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
Life is a quest requiring faith and friendship.
8. Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome by Kent and Barbara Hughes
The measurements we use to gauge success in ministry are often unbiblical and enslaving, the Scriptures show us how to define true success in ministry.
9. Spark by John Ratey
Exercise may benefit your brain more than your body.
10. A Praying Life by Paul Miller
Prayer is dangerous.
11. A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
Right-brained thinkers are the ones who will make an impact in today’s world.
12. The Prodigal God by Tim Keller
Christianity is something far more freeing and wonderful, total and comprehensive, than most think.
13. Living in the Gap Between Promise and Reality by Iain Duguid
Abraham’s life was lived in the gap between promise and reality, the place where faith is forged.
14. Into Thin Air by John Krakauer
The guy you think is frozen and dead tonight might surprise you by showing up tomorrow morning.
15. Feelings and Faith by Brian Borgman
Stop being enslaved by negative emotions, learn to cultivate your emotions to honor God.
16. Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite by Charles Farabee and Jim Myers
Many people have died in many different ways in Yosemite.
17. From Fear to Freedom: Living as Sons and Daughters of God by Rose Marie Miller
Hearing one pastor’s wife’s story of moving from fear to freedom inspires you to leave behind orphan-like living.
18. You Can Change by Tim Chester
What you worship and what you think about all day is the key to deep change.
19. Counsel from the Cross by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Dennis Johnson
Don’t attempt to care for and counsel people without connecting everything back to the cross.
20. Paul the Missionary by Eckhard Schnabel
Paul’s life still has everything to teach us about realities, strategies, and methods for advancing the gospel.
Add to the list, what was your favorite read in 2009?
The Manhattan Declaration
Last Friday The Manhattan Declaration was released, a new six-page statement from the pens of evangelical, orthodox, and Catholic Christians. The statement was written to “reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good,” namely: “the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, and the rights of conscience and religious liberty”
The declaration was drafted by Robert George, Timothy George, and Chuck Colson. Signers of the statement include J.I. Packer, Randy Alcorn, Tim Keller, Wayne Grudem, Joni Eareckson Tada, Peter Kreeft, Al Mohler, Ravi Zacharias, and many others.
The Manhattan Declaration has now received 88,384 signatures. That number will have gone up by the time you read this. This is a timely document for America and for the church. I think Christians should carefully read The Manhattan Declaration and consider signing it. Take 15 minutes to read the document, then go here if interested in signing it. I signed the document earlier this morning.
Below is the beautifully written Preamble to The Manhattan Declaration. Read the whole document here.
Preamble:
Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.
While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire’s sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.
After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce’s leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.
In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.
This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes – from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.
Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.
Invented Happiness
On Sunday, in talking about what it means to be made in God’s image, I used this great quote from C.S. Lewis:
What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’—could set up on their own as if they had created themselves—be their own masters—invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn…There is no other.
The Image of God
Here’s my sermon from Sunday, The Image of God.
Curtis “Voice” Allen
My friend Curtis “Voice” Allen is visiting 20s tomorrow night to perform some of his latest rap and to preach to us. It will be a great night. Check out Curtis’ latest album, “a theist.”
20 Books to Read in Your 20s
I’ve made a few adjustments to the original 20 Books to Read in Your 20s list that I created last year for the single and married twentysomethings I work with here in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Thanks for the many comments and suggestions you made on this last year, here and here. Any thoughts on this revised list?
You can download this file as a bookmark: 20booksv09_web
Overcoming Worry
Earlier this year I appreciated Brian Borgman’s excellent book, Feelings and Faith: Cultivating Godly Emotions in the Christian Life. Brian has just written a helpful article on overcoming emotions of fear, anxiety, and worry. Here’s an excerpt:
Fear, anxiety and worry are definitely emotions. Worry is a feeling of uneasiness. The word “worry” comes from an old English word meaning to be seized, usually by the throat, shaken, mangled and killed. An unpleasant thought to be sure, but an apt picture of how a disturbing thought can seize us and shake us. Fear is a distressing emotion of impending danger or pain, real or perceived. Anxiety is full on mental and emotional distress caused by fear. In the range of human emotions, this trilogy seems to be most out of our control, or so we think. After all, fear, anxiety and worry are most commonly associated with circumstances beyond our control. But here is a challenging thought: the very emotions we believe to be most outside of our control are the very ones God tells us not to have. To put it another way, God tells us to control our emotions. To take this a little farther, God actually diagnoses our fear, anxiety and worry and gives us the remedy to overcome them.
