Aaron Armstrong

bloggingtheologically.com

love

Three men who taught me to love theology

by

An open Bible being read

One of the first Christian books I read as a new believer was GK Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. I’m still not entirely certain what motivated me to pick this book up—I could have chosen any number of other titles—but this was the one. I devoured it, leaving nary a page unmarked. My mind was on fire as I read each sentence. I didn’t understand most of what I read (Chesterton tends to not make it easy for his readers), but I didn’t care. Whatever else you could say about what he wrote, he was excited. Passionate. He believed what he wrote, and I wanted more.

A friend told me I needed to read this book, that it would change my life. Knowing God by J.I. Packer. It took me months to read, each page a rich meal. The words of a man who knew much about God and also knew God intimately. Who wanted his readers to know that “the width of our knowledge about [God] is no gauge of the depth of our knowledge of Him.”

Mere Christianity was in my hands, a book I didn’t know existed. CS Lewis, in my mind, was the author of a wonderful children’s book I read as an eight year old. But this was no fairytale. It was the work of a man whose delight was found in working his way “through a tough bit of theology.” A man captivated by big questions and even bigger ideas and a God simply too glorious for him to fully comprehend.

Chesterton, Packer, and Lewis. These men didn’t teach me what to think, necessarily. They didn’t teach me what I was supposed to believe. Instead, these are the men who are to blame for creating in me a hunger for something I never knew I wanted. A wonderful gift that has sustained me throughout some of the most difficult times of my adult life. A deep love of theology. One I am forever grateful for.

The most loving thing you can do for people far from God

by

Heart on a log

We’ve been going through the book of 1 John for the last several weeks at our church. It’s been both a blessing and a near-constant challenge. A blessing because there is so much good news in this epistle—some of the most striking words I’ve read in Scripture are here, including:

  • “Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in action and in truth” (1 John 3:18).
  • “The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:8).
  • “We love because he first loved us” (4:19).
  • “This is how we know that we love God’s children: when we love God and obey his commands” (1 John 5:2).
  • “For this is what love for God is: to keep his commands. And his commands are not a burden” (1 John 5:3).

Challenging because these same words give us a much deeper picture of love than the world does. We typically think of love as a feeling, as affection (which it is). But John goes beyond that and shows us that love has legs. And it inevitably expresses itself in obedience to God’s commands.

That is what it means to love.

Every so often there’s some hubbub that follows a pastor being on a TV show. Often what happens is this: the pastor is asked a few softball questions, or some that are easy wins. But inevitably, the “gotcha” questions come out—questions about hot topics like homosexuality and abortion. The ones that are there to remind the audience that you’re not like them.

A megachurch pastor from New York was hit with these recently. John MacArthur has been asked multiple times. Ditto Russell Moore, and Albert Mohler, and countless others. Even Joel Osteen’s been hammered with them.1

And then there’s the rest of us, the people who don’t appear on TV. We’re not exempt from the gotcha questions just because we don’t have the kind of influence that puts us in those situations. We get them from our family members. We get them from friends. We get them from coworkers.

And in every instance, in the same way that pastors and Christian leaders who are challenged with the gotchas must, we must make a choice: we can tell the truth, hopefully in a gracious and respectful way. Or we can try to dance around the issue. But whether we’re on TV or in a coffee shop, dancing doesn’t work. So let’s not do that. The most loving thing we can do for people far from God, especially if our goal is to lead them to Christ, is to tell the truth.

 

  1. I’m not picking on Osteen by mentioning him here, nor anyone else named or alluded to for that matter. ↵

Links I like (6/13)

by

Links I like

4 Reasons to Enjoy Growing Older

Michael Kelley:

Even as Christians, we feel the reality of time taking its toll. And yet as Christians, we have the unique ability not to see aging as bad news:

Gray hair is a glorious crown; it is found in the ways of righteousness (Prov. 16:31).

Why might that be? Why can the Christian actually stand apart from a culture growing younger and not only embrace getting older but actually enjoy it?

Gender and the Christian Standard Bible: Trevin Wax Answers My Questions

This is a good conversation.

‘We Were in Marital Hell’

Kay Warren:

Our brand-new marriage took an instant nosedive. We didn’t even make it to the end of our two-week honeymoon to British Columbia before we knew our relationship was in serious trouble. We had been warned about five areas of potential conflict all couples have to deal with, and we immediately jumped into all five of them: sex, communication, money, children, and in-laws. We were so young—barely 21—and inexperienced, and when sex didn’t work and we argued about sex, and then argued about our arguments and began to layer resentment on top of resentment, it was a perfect setup for misery and disenchantment.

Love Is Not Whatever You Want It to Be

Alex Duke:

But using language like this stretches and re-stretches important concepts into utter subjectivism. The result: love is emptied of its meaning and weight, and subsequently replaced by a lesser good—something ersatz and manmade, something wobbly and even capricious. “Love” is now a universal term for nothing in particular, which makes conversations about it difficult.

How One Deep South Church Left Segregation Behind

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra shares a great story.

Yawning at the Glory of God

David McLemore:

Since I now get up before the sun rises, and since we built that deck in the backyard, sometimes I take a lamp out, get the cushions out of the deck box, and sit facing East. I read and I write and I study and I think about God and how to put the amazing truths of Romans 8, for example, into a 3,000-word paper that will help others see just a little of the glory. If you’re a writer, you’ll know that a lot of writing is sitting in one spot and staring into space for a considerable amount of time. It’s how we think. But have you ever done that as the sun rises early in the morning? Have you ever done that outside? Staring into space, I mean.

Free training sessions at SBC17

We’re running special training sessions at the SBC meeting in Phoenix this week. If you’re there, do come by and check them out.

Should we kinda, sorta, maybe pray?

A favorite from the archives:

I often forget that making a request of God in prayer is not something I should hesitate to do. Instead, more often I come to him with trepidation. I know that I have no reason to doubt God’s goodness. I have seen him answer my prayers time and again. I’ve seen him provide exactly what we needed as a family right when we needed it. I’ve seen him miraculously heal a young person in our church. He’s prevented Emily from dying, blessed certain opportunities, and given his yes to so many other things besides.

But still, there’s this part of me that lacks confidence when I pray, even though I know I don’t need to be that way.

%d bloggers like this: