David Wells on how we put ourselves in place of the Bible (or, evangelical paganism)

“The Bible is not a remarkable illustration of what we have already heard within ourselves; it is a remarkable discovery of what we have not and cannot hear within ourselves. Thus, our inward sense of God and our intuitions about meaning are irrelevant in any effort to differentiate biblical truth from pagan belief. It is how we apply ourselves to learn what God has disclosed of himself in a realm outside ourselves that is important. And unless we steadfastly maintain this distinction in the face of the modern pressures to destroy it, we will soon find that we are using the Bible merely to corroborate the validity of what we have already found within our own religious consciousness - which is another way of saying that we are putting ourselves in place of the Bible. It is another way of reasserting the old paganism. When that happens, theology is irredeemably reduced to autobiograpy, and preaching degenerates into mere storytelling.”

— David Well, No Place for Truth, 279

Our church's second birthday video

Nearly three years ago a small group of us began praying about planting a new Jesus-loving, Bible-believing, Gospel-centered church in the heart of downtown Seattle. After ten months of prayer, planning and preparation we marked our birth on the first Sunday of April 2011. A week ago, by God's grace, we celebrated our second birthday. It has been a challenging and joy-filled stretch. We put this clip together to recount our brief history and some of the most significant evidences of grace along the way. Thanks for sharing in our joy. 

Resurrection quotes on the eve of Easter from Wright, Keller, Augustine and others

“Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven.”

— N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

“Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future into the present.”

— N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

“We could cope—the world could cope—with a Jesus who ultimately remains a wonderful idea inside his disciples’ minds and hearts. The world cannot cope with a Jesus who comes out of the tomb, who inaugurates God’s new creation right in the middle of the old one.”

— N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

“If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.”

— Timothy Keller, The Reason for God

“For me the most radical demand of Christian faith lies in summoning the courage to say yes to the present risenness of Jesus Christ.”

— Brennan Manning, Abba's Child

“I don’t care to inquire why they cannot believe an earthly body can be in heaven, while the whole earth is suspended on nothing.”

— Augustine, City of God

“Any position in which claims about Jesus or the resurrection are removed from the realm of historical reality and placed in a subjective realm of personal belief or some realm that is immune to human scrutiny does Jesus and the resurrection no service and no justice. It is a ploy of desperation to suggest that the Christian faith would be little affected if Jesus was not actually raised from the dead in space and time.

A person who gives up on the historical foundations of our faith has in fact given up on the possibility of any real continuity between his or her own faith and that of a Peter, Paul, James, John, Mary Magdalene, or Priscilla. The first Christian community had a strong interest in historical reality, especially the historical reality of Jesus and his resurrection, because they believed their faith, for better or for worse, was grounded in it.”

— Ben Witherington

Martin Lloyd Jones on the terrible error of making your feelings central

“Avoid the mistake of concentrating overmuch on your feelings. Above all, avoid the terrible error of making them central. Now I am never tired of repeating this because I find so frequently that this is a cause of stumbling. Feelings are never meant to take the first place, they are never meant to be central. If you put them there you are of necessity doomed to be unhappy, because you are not following the order that God himself has ordained. Feelings are always the result of something else, and how anyone who has ever read the Bible can fall into that particular error passes my comprehension. The Psalmist put it in the 34th Psalm. He says, ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good.’ You will never see until you have tasted; you will not know it, you will not feel it until you have tried it. ‘Taste and see’, it follows as the night the day. Seeing before tasting is impossible. That is something that is constantly emphasized everywhere in the Scriptures. After all, what we have in the Bible is Truth; it is not emotional stimulus, it is not something primarily concerned to give us a joyful experience. It is primarily Truth, and Truth is addressed to the mind, God’s supreme gift to man; and it is as we apprehend and submit ourselves to the truth that the feelings follow. I must never ask myself in the first instance: What do I feel about this? The first question is, Do I believe it? Do I accept it, has it gripped me? Very well, that is what I regard as perhaps the most important rule of all, that we must not concentrate overmuch upon our feelings. Do not spend too much time feeling your own pulse taking your own spiritual temperature, do not spend too much time analyzing your feelings. This is the high road to morbidity.”

— Martin Lloyd Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure

Zack Eswine on surrendering to noble limits

“To relinquish; to admit that some dreams are presumptuous; to acknowledge that some needs outlast me; to recognize my inability to fully supply what is lacking; to admit that I am limited; to say no to competition with brothers and sisters, and to give to others what I strongly desired for myself; and in it all to still take up the pen or give voice to preach Jesus—these indicate a surrender to noble limits.”

— Zack Eswine, Sensing Jesus: Life and Ministry as a Human Being