The Difference Between Hospitality and Entertaining

Jen Wilkin unpacks the difference in a really helpful way over on The Gospel Coalition website. Here's a taste to whet your appetite:

• Entertaining is always thinking about the next course. Hospitality burns the rolls because it was listening to a story. 

• Entertaining obsesses over what went wrong. Hospitality savors what was shared. 

• Entertaining, exhausted, says “It was nothing, really!” Hospitality thinks it was nothing. Really. 

• Entertaining seeks to impress. Hospitality seeks to bless.

Read the whole thing.

"Why Porn Kills Sex"

Russell Moore has an excellent post here, in response to this week's Time Magazine cover article.

One excerpt:

...Why does it seem that pornography ultimately kills sexual intimacy? There are, to be sure, many psychological explanations. Pornography desensitizes one to sexual stimuli, feeds the quest for endless novelty, and creates a script of expectations that does not, and cannot, meet up to the real dynamics of personal relationship. But I think there’s more afoot here.

... Pornography kills sexuality because porn isn’t just about sex and because sex isn’t just about sex.

Read the whole thing.

Taking a Beating For the Sake of Sharing Beauty

If you've ever seen The Shawshank Redemption, you'll probably remember this powerful scene: 

Justin Taylor shares the thoughts of Julian Johnson, Regius Chair of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London:

Anyone who knows The Shawhank Redemption will recall the effect of this iconic moment, when the prisoner, Andy Dufresne, locks himself in the prison office and plays a duet from Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro over the PA system. The entire compound comes to a standstill as the strains of the music drift over the exercise yard and hardened prisoners and guards alike stand open-mouthed, silenced by the arresting beauty of a music from a distant place. 

Of course, you might think, any music would have done; music, as a whole, has this capacity to make the imaginary seem palpable, to promise something that exceeds our immediate reality, to recollect the loss of something infinitely valuable. 

But I think it’s significant that the director, Frank Darabont, chose to use Mozart at this moment. The disjunction between the world of classical opera and the brutality of the prison in which the film is set, its very strangeness, is the key to its power to stop “every last man” in its tracks. Part of its beauty, and the incomprehensible power of its fragility, derives from this sense of distance—that this music comes from elsewhere and speaks of a better order of things that, for this brief moment, cuts through the hardened surface of everyday reality at Shawshank. 

The sense is enhanced by the effect of hearing music from an old vinyl record, played through the tinny speakers of the prison PA system, whose normal function is one of repressive control. The hiss and whirr of the record, the distortion of the speakers, combine to create the effect of a music heard from a great distance, not just in place but also in time. The beauty of these voices, it seems, is brought into the present from another age, as an ephemeral restoration of something lost of the past. For “every last man” this music sounds from a quite different world, yet it enters the mind like a distant, long-forgotten memory and the most fragile of future promises. Allowing it to sound through the bars of this “drab little cage” is a deeply transgressive act, for which Dufresne gets two weeks in solitary confinement, and no doubt a beating too.

Professor Johnson uses this as an illustration of why he's written his new book, Who Needs Classical Music? Cultural Choice and Musical Value. It made me think of how the Kingdom of God breaks into the "drab little cage" of this world and "speaks of a better order of things that...cuts through the hardened surface of everyday reality." 

What a powerful parable of what we can and should be! Our communication of the glory of the gospel, our love that incarnates it, our churches displaying a peculiarly beautiful harmony -- music from another age, another Country! When you've heard the beauty of this song, you'll risk a beating to pipe it into the domain of darkness.

Meditate On This

I don't think you'll regret hopping on and riding along with this meditation train.

First, Psalm 12.
Then, Micah 7.

And cap it off by listening to this song by Jon Foreman. It's a rich, artistic meditation on Micah 7. You've got to pay careful attention to the words, and be sure to listen all the way to the end!

How Affairs Begin

How does an affair begin? One writer may have witnessed one begin while on a recent flight. He writes about it here, warning of 3 elements that make it easier to walk into this life-wrecking trap.

1. They were isolated.
2. They lowered their guards.
3. They made plans to spend time together. 

Don't buy the lies that illicit sex and romance are selling. Instead, buy in -- hook, line, and sinker -- to the wisdom of Proverbs 4-9 (emphasis added):

Proverbs 4:20-23, 25-27

My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. ... Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.

Proverbs 6:32-33

He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself. He will get wounds and dishonor, and his disgrace will not be wiped away.

Proverbs 6:27-29

Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched? So is he who goes in to his neighbor's wife; none who touches her will go unpunished.

Proverbs 7:21-23

With much seductive speech she persuades him; with her smooth talk she compels him. All at once (does it give you chills?) he follows her, as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a stag is caught fast till an arrow pierces its liver; as a bird rushes into a snare; he does not know that it will cost him his life.

What's Your Part In The Unfinished Task?

Good video from OMF:

When Your Child Says, "I Don't Know"

Julie Lowe over at CCEF offers some excellent parenting advice. Here's a taste of where she's headed: 

...at a surprisingly young age, children learn they can avoid engaging in thoughtful discussion by giving the notorious "I don't know" response to our questions. 

...We need to find ways to get past such responses and give them insight into their own hearts. Proverbs 20:5 says, “The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.” The question is how can we draw them out?

She goes on to give several wise methods for drawing out your child. Read on and find some very practical help.

Family Worship Faithfulness

Don Whitney has a great little book on Family Worship. I recommend it, but if reading a 60 page book on the topic sounds a little too daunting, Crossway Publishers is offering a bite-size primer ("Family Worship 101") in the form of a 5 day email course. You can sign up here.

If a "testimony" of the cumulative impact of family worship in a child's life would be helpful, read Don Whitney's post entitled, "Family Worship and the Day I Made My Daughter Cry." And just so you don't think family worship is for those other families whose kids sit with rapt attention for hours, here's an except:

Now before you imagine something that isn’t true, I want you to know that I cannot recall once in the thousands of nights before Laurelen wrote these words when we concluded family worship and I had some atmospheric sense of the presence of God. Not one time did we finish family worship where I would have said afterward, “The Lord evidently moved in great power among us tonight.”

On the contrary, most nights our family gathering was more like, “Will y’all pay attention; I’m reading the Bible here. . . . Please put down your phone. . . . Are you listening?”

Read the whole thing and be encouraged to persevere in your calling to live out Deuteronomy 6:4-9:

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Must Bethel Be Multi-Ethnic?

Given where the Lord has planted us, I say, "Yes!" I hope you agree.

Jesus died for it.

Revelation 5:9-10 And they sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth."

Heaven will be gloriously, beautifully diverse in its God-centered unity.

Revelation 7:9-10 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!"

I'd encourage you to watch the following video where John Piper asks Pastors Stephen Um and Trip Lee if every church must be multi-ethnic. If you want God's kingdom to come, and his will to be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10), let's all embrace our responsibility (and opportunities!) to help Bethel become a better foretaste of Heaven.


Must Every Church Be Multi-ethnic? from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

What Does The Bible Mean By "The Flesh"?

The Bible often uses the term, "flesh," to refer to something other than the skin on our bodies. What is it actually referring to? For example, what exactly is it that is against the Holy Spirit in Galatians 5:17?

For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

This "flesh" has desires. It wants things. It's almost like it's alive. Some translations go with "sinful nature." That helps some.

In his book, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, Richard F. Lovelace says,

...the flesh might be called a "God complex." 

A "complex," in psychological terms, is "a core pattern of emotions, memories, perceptions, and wishes in the personal unconscious organized around a common theme, such as power or status."

He goes on to show how our "God complex" always backfires on us, because,

...the unconscious awareness of our independence from God and an unrelieved consciousness of guilt create a profound insecurity in the unbeliever or the Christian who is not walking in light. This insecurity generates a kind of compensatory egoism, self-oriented but somewhat different from serious pride. Thus much of what is called pride is actually not godlike self-admiration, but masked inferiority, insecurity and deep self-loathing. (90)

The flesh often rules. We side with the flesh all the time and stiff-arm the Spirit. If Lovelace is right, how ironic that our desire to be our own gods (strong and capable and satisfied!) is what makes us so pathetically fragile and insecure.

The flesh is alive and kicking. No doubt about it. And it's killing us. But we don't owe the flesh anything. We don't have to bow the knee to its desires. We need to kill it...and we will live...for (the True) God.

Romans 8:12-13 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.