Selections From Psalm 119

I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your Word.
Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.
Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways.
This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.
The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.
I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life.
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
Keep steady my steps according to your promise, and let no iniquity get dominion over me.
I rise before dawn and cry for help; I hope in your words.
Plead my cause and redeem me; give me life according to your promise!
I rejoice in your word like one who finds great spoil.
I long for your salvation, O Lord, and your law is my delight.
I have gone astray like a sheep; seek your servant.

Psalm 119 is really long.  These are my favorite verses from the chapter.  May we delight in God, as well as his law and his commands.  There is a difference between following God begrudgingly and doing it out of joy and in love.

Thoughts on Missions/The American Church

Over Spring Break, I took a trip down to Woodstock, Georgia with my old youth pastor, Trent Chambers.  Trent is planting a church with Sojourn from Louisville in Woodstock, just north of Atlanta.  Of the 470,000 people that live within ten miles of downtown Woodstock, 15% attend church.  This is quite shocking because I, like many others, assume that everyone in the heart of the Bible belt like northern Georgia would be attending church.  The fact is they aren't.  Around 400,000 in the Woodstock area do not go to church.

Over my three days visit, God taught me several things.  One of the main lessons is that we are all missionaries.  You don't have to go to Africa or Haiti to be a missionary.  Too many times, I think that we put missions into a box.  I'm guilty of this.  Missions is a daily adventure that is not reserved for foreign countries and church trips.  Our next-door neighbors, classmates, sports teams, and people we come into contact with everyday need Christ just as much as people in a jungle.

I talked about this with another person, and we started talking about why people go on mission trips.  Are we really laboring for the sake of Christ getting His reward for His suffering, or do we just want to look good in a cool Facebook album with some needy kids?  Or are we really laboring at all?  As important as those short-term mission trips are, we do not in fact labor.  Our laboring is done in where we live.  The mission field is whatever a Christian is engaged in daily.

Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few."  Matthew 9:37


It was neat to see the church, which consists of about five of six families, meet in a house.  There are house churches all over the world, many of which meet in secret.  To be in one for the first time really put the American Church into perspective.  Is Church about buildings, programs, numbers, cool music, etc?  Is the Church serving it's purpose of exalting the name of Jesus and doing life together within a radically loving and intimate community?

"A church is a community of individuals who have lost their lives to follow Christ.  Surely it follows that we would be willing to lose our programs and our preferences, to sacrifice our budgets and our buildings, to let go of our most cherished legacies and reputations if there is a better way to make his glory known in the world." -David Platt

As many problems as I have with the American Church, it's our job to help fix it.  God deserves the utmost praise, love, and glory that we can possibly give.  We cannot hinder that with an incorrect view of missions and church.

If you want to join the prayer team or support Trent and his family, visit http://sojournwoodstock.com/

Not What My Hands Have Done

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogV7Xpn0-3Y


I stumbled upon a worship song by artist Aaron Keyes called "Not What My Hands Have Done" that I found very profound.  Here are the lyrics:


"Not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul;
not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole.
Not what I feel or do can give me peace with God;
not all my prayers and sighs and tears can bear my awful load.

These guilty hands are raised, filthy rags are all I bring
And I have come to hide beneath your wings
These holy hands are raised, Washed in the fountain of your grace
And now I wear your righteousness

Thy work alone oh Christ can ease this weight of sin
Thy blood alone, oh Lamb of God, can give me peace within
Thy Love to me, oh God, not mine oh Lord to Thee
Can rid me of this dark unrest and set my Spirit free

Thy grace alone oh God to me can pardon speak
Thy power alone oh Lamb of God can this sore bondage break
No other work save thine, no other blood will do
No strength but that which is divine can bear me safely through

I praise the God of grace; I trust his truth and might
He calls me his, I call him mine, My God, my Joy, my Light
My Lord has saved my life and freely pardon gives;
I love because he first loved me, I live because he lives."


So much amazing truth contained in these lyrics.  The song really encapsulates the beauty of the gospel.  It's not what we can do that brings salvation, nor our toiling, or how we "feel".  It doesn't matter what we feel.  What matters is that all the good works we can muster will only produce guilty hands and filthy rags.  Even our "righteous acts" are filthy to God.


All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.  Isaiah 64:6


So what changed?  How did we go from having guilt hands and filthy rags to having holy hands and wearing righteousness?  The work of Christ.  The blood of the Lamb.  It eases the weight of sin, gives us peace within, rids us of the darkness of our sin, and sets our spirits free.  Nothing more and nothing less than the blood and work of Christ.



For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.  Romans 3:23-26