Getting Things Done – Part 2

This is Part 2 of a blog series on Getting Things Done.  See also: Part 1 (Categorizing Your Tasks).

 

Living in Quadrant 2: Important/Not Urgent

In Part 1, I shared a model for categorizing tasks.  I stated that Quadrant 2 (Important/Not Urgent) is where we want to live and be.  This is the important quadrant to manage because failure to do so leads you to Quadrant 1 (Important/Urgent) in which the result is stress.  So the following are some ways to manage ourselves while in Quadrant 1:

 

Prepare

We all have important things to do and the best thing we can do is properly prepare to physically get them done.  I will share a methodology regarding specifically how to go about this in Part 3 of this series, but suffice it here to say that you must prepare.  You have to have a methodology, an organized way that allows you to properly prepare to get things done.

 

Plan

Closely related with preparation, is the plan.  How exactly and when exactly will you do Task 1, Task 2, Task 594?  We live busy lives, we have families to attend to, work to do, school and meetings to attend, homework to do, papers to write, books to read, fun to have, trips to take, projects to complete.  What is your plan to get these things done?  Are you just free-wheeling it and coasting, or have you sat down with a notebook and paper and actually planned how to get your stuff done?  Again, in Part 3, I’ll lay out a methodology.

 

Prevent

Prevention must be looked at from two perspectives: 1) Avoiding procrastination and 2) holding fast to your preparation and planning in order to prevent it from being overcome by other stuff.  When stuff is in your important/non-urgent quadrant, it is your responsibility to avoid procrastinating so that it does not make its way to important/urgent.  Similarly, when you have your preparation done and your plan set, you have to take some measures to protect that.  Accepting new tasks is a continual process, but with a carefully though-out plan, measures can be taken to organize your incoming tasks such that they do not negatively impact your workflow.

 

Train/Coach

When you’re actually able to work and live out of the important/non-urgent quadrant, take measures to train and coach others.  Try to get out of the “I’ll just do it myself” mentality while in this quadrant.  The goal here is an appropriate dose of delegation.  Often times when living in Quadrant 1 (Important/Urgent) this is not possible or feasible; but, if you can remain out of the urgent quadrant, take the time raise up others so that everything doesn’t necessarily have to funnel through you.

 

Build Relationships

This is one of those things that simply is important, but often not considered urgent.  Our tendency is to let this one slip.  Make it a part of your plan.  As you prepare and plan your methodology for getting things done, don’t overlook personal commitments. 

 

 

This post has been focused on living in Quadrant 2 where you focus on the important things while remaining (as much as possible) out of the realm of urgency.  In Part 3, we’ll look more in depth at the preparation and planning portions via the context of a methodology (largely based on the David Alan method).

Back-Words

Stressed spelled backwards is desserts.

OT History - Part 16

I’m a little late with uploading the notes for tonight’s OT History class.  Tonight we’ll be looking at a broad overview of 1&2 Kings tonight and touching on 1&2 Chronicles as well.  The main intent for tonight is to help the class to be able to see how they should study Kings and Chronicles and give them some resources and thoughts on doing so.

Here are the notes for tonight’s class:

1&2 Kings Overview

 

Also, we’ll be drawing heavily on some of the handouts from last week.

 

*See other resources regarding OT History here.

Making a Book Your Own

Tim Challies shares a quote from Mortimer Adler, author of the classic How to Read a Book.  I read something similar in a book several years ago by J.P. Moreland  (Love the Lord Your God With All Your Mind) and allowed it to revolutionize the way I read books.

Here is a quote from Mortimer Adler, author of the classic How to Read a Book. In this piece he explains the importance of making a book your own.

 There are two ways in which one can own a book. The first is the property right you establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes and furniture. But this act of purchase is only the prelude to possession. Full ownership comes only when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it is by writing in it. An illustration may make the point clear. You buy a beefsteak and transfer it from the butcher’s icebox to your own. But you do not own the beefsteak in the most important sense until you consume it and get it into your bloodstream. I am arguing that books, too, must be absorbed in your blood stream to do you any good.

Confusion about what it means to “own” a book leads people to a false reverence for paper, binding, and type — a respect for the physical thing — the craft of the printer rather than the genius of the author. They forget that it is possible for a man to acquire the idea, to possess the beauty, which a great book contains, without staking his claim by pasting his bookplate inside the cover. Having a fine library doesn’t prove that its owner has a mind enriched by books; it proves nothing more than that he, his father, or his wife, was rich enough to buy them.

There are three kinds of book owners. The first has all the standard sets and best sellers — unread, untouched. (This deluded individual owns woodpulp and ink, not books.) The second has a great many books — a few of them read through, most of them dipped into, but all of them as clean and shiny as the day they were bought. (This person would probably like to make books his own, but is restrained by a false respect for their physical appearance.) The third has a few books or many — every one of them dog-eared and dilapidated, shaken and loosened by continual use, marked and scribbled in from front to back. (This man owns books.) …

 But the soul of a book “can” be separate from its body. A book is more like the score of a piece of music than it is like a painting. No great musician confuses a symphony with the printed sheets of music. Arturo Toscanini reveres Brahms, but Toscanini’s score of the G minor Symphony is so thoroughly marked up that no one but the maestro himself can read it. The reason why a great conductor makes notations on his musical scores — marks them up again and again each time he returns to study them—is the reason why you should mark your books. If your respect for magnificent binding or typography gets in the way, buy yourself a cheap edition and pay your respects to the author.

 

 

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Life Admin

Recently I’ve decided to add a little more structure to how I go about my life.  I’m calling it “Life Admin.”  Basically, I’m making it my goal to sit down for an hour or so on the first Monday of the month blocking out some time to reflect on the previous month as well as look forward and pray about the upcoming month.  In doing so, I’m planning to reflect on the different areas of my life: God, Family, Ministry/Seminar/Church Planting, Self, Relationships, and Work.  I’ll elaborate more on those categories in a moment, but the intent here is to reflect back over the previous month with respect to how I’ve been doing in each of these areas - repenting and seeking for forgiveness in the areas I’ve neglected and praying forward for each area as the new month comes upon me.

At the end of each Life Admin session, I also plan to sketch out a few goals for the upcoming month.  A goal might be something as simple as: take my oldest daughter to a baseball game.  The point is to get it down and in front of me in my journal so I can come back to it.

The following expands each of the categories I plan to focus on:

God

Here I want to ask: How are things between me and God?  How is my relationship with Jesus?  How am I doing with trusting him?  How am I doing with surrendering to his will for my life and my family?  How am I doing with repenting of sin and seeking his forgiveness?  Have I been spending adequate time in prayer and in his Word?  What’s been working?  What isn’t?  How can I improve my relationship with Jesus?  In what ways can I better worship him throughout my day?

 

Family

There are two aspects to this one: individual focus and collective focus.  For my wife, I want to ask:  What has stood out to me recently about her?  How is she doing?  What are here greatest fears/anxieties right now?  What is she most excited about or interested in?  How can I encourage her?  How should I be praying for her?  How am I doing with respect to praying together with her?  How is our relationship doing?  When was our last date?  Have I spent adequate time focusing on her?  What are some ways I can focus on her in the coming month?  What are some specific ways I can show her my love?  What areas of myself do I need to work on with respect to her?  How can I best serve her?

For the girls, I’ll ask many of the same questions - specifically, have I been spending adequate one-on-one time with them?  What is something that I have done individually with each of them?  What are their fears/anxieties?  What are they most interested in and excited about?  How should I be praying for each of them?

Collectively, I want to ask myself: how am I doing as the spiritual head of my family?  Have I been making a regular effort for family prayer and reading God’s Word together?  What are some things we want to do as a family and what am I doing to make those happen?  Am I taking good care of my household?  Have I placed disproportionate time in other areas at the neglect of my family?

 

Ministry/Seminary/Church Planting

Have I been carving out time to serve?  How is seminary going?  Am I maximizing my learning experience with God’s Word, or am I going through the motions?  Have I been spending adequate time in preparation for teaching assignments?  What is going well?  What do I need to work on?  What do I need help with?  Have I over-committed myself?  Have I given all that I can?

 

Self

How am I doing?  How am I really doing?  Emotionally?  Physically?  Mentally?  Am I taking good care of myself?  Am I working out?  Why not?  Have I been having enough alone time?  How can I secure some “me time” in the coming month?  What is something that I will read in the next month for me (i.e. not for seminary, not for work, not for church classes, etc)?

 

Relationships

Have I been spending time with my brothers/sisters in Christ?  Have I been intentional about spending time with friends outside of church (or am I stuck in my Christian huddle)?  How am I doing with respect to connecting with my neighbors and co-workers?  What are some things that are going good?  Bad?  When was the last time I had a men’s night out?

 

Work

How is work going?  How have my stress levels been?  How has my attitude about work been while at work?  While at home?  Have I been working too many hours?  Not enough hours?  Have I been giving my employer my best?

 

The above is by no means an exhaustive listing of questions, but rather just a spewage of some of the things I want to ask myself and focus on as I reflect back and look forward.  I’m sure these areas will change and the questions too - the goal, however, is to get my mind in the habit of thinking in detail regarding how I’m living my life and how I’m managing my priorities.  It is so easy to just coast and not be intentional about people and things that are really important to us.  This is part of my attempt to not let myself coast.

 

You Might Live in the Bible Belt If…

You might live in the Bible Belt if…there are 7 churches between your house and the nearest grocery store (…and another one just one block further…and none of them are your home church).

Take a closer look by clicking on the Google map below.

Getting Things Done - Part 1

Getting Things Done - Part 1

As a continuing part of a leadership development program that I am involved with at work, today I attended another AAIM seminar.  Today’s seminar was a full-day seminar focusing on Personal Productivity (i.e. Getting More Done / Getting Things Done).  I’ve been looking forward to this seminar for a while as I typically have a flurry of stuff going on between family, work, church, school, home projects, etc.  It was a profitable day for me and so this series of blog posts will be geared towards sharing some of what I learned (much of which was not rocket science, but rather refreshing and novel stuff that we simply fail to put into practice).

The class was geared around the following objectives:

• Identify how you use your time; identify which activities are important and which are a waste of your time.
• Create a comprehensive list of all of your outstanding commitments.
• Use a process to quickly identify the next actions needed to complete projects.
• Develop a personalized system to keep track of your commitments and projects.
• Describe ways to eliminate procrastination.
• Identify ways of eliminating or lessening interruptions.

Categorizing Your Tasks

One of the more helpful ideas discussed was the concept of categorizing your tasks based on urgency and importance.  The concept takes the structure of a quadrant with horizontal categories of “Urgent” and “Not Urgent” and vertical categories of “Important” and “Not Important”.

Quadrant 1: Urgent/Important

This is the quadrant in which most of us fall.  We’ve got a lot of stuff to do and it all seems important (whether to us or someone else).  Some of this is just part of our jobs, but some of it is due more so to lack of preparation, poor planning, or procrastination.  This is the quadrant of crisis which makes our lives feel stressed.  The best thing you can do with the stuff in this quadrant is to manage it.

Quadrant 2: Important/Not Urgent

This is the quadrant in which we want to be - this is where we should want to live.  Much of what is in here is often what leads to Quadrant 1 if we fail to prepare or plan or if we procrastinate.  I’ll talk more about how to properly manage ourselves in this quadrant in Part 2 of this blog series.

Quadrant 3: Urgent/Not Important

This is the quadrant of deception.  This is where we must hold fast to the phrase: “poor planning on your part does not necessitate an emergency on mine.”  This is the quadrant that most often leads to our feeling of annoyance.  Strive to avoid this quadrant by saying no and holding up your priorities.

Quadrant 4: Not Urgent/Not Important

This is the quadrant of excess.  All sorts of things can fall in to this quadrant - the goal is to keep them out.  This does not contradict the need for down-time; but, when non-urgent, unimportant things fill our lives, we’re losing focus on the important things (and possibly other urgent things).

So the intent here is to categorize your tasks, determine which quadrant they fall into and treat them as such.  In Part 2, we’ll look in more detail with respect to living in Quadrant 2 which is the ideal.

Book Fair This Weekend

My wife and I are excited for the 59th annual Greater St. Louis Book Fair going on this weekend at West County Center (i.e. the east parking garage at the West County Mall). Most everything there is priced between $1-$5. I’m looking foward to scavenging around for some good finds.

Here is the time info:

Thursday	May 1st	4pm - 10pm
Friday	May 2nd	10am - 9:30pm
Saturday	May 3rd	10am - 9:30pm
Sunday	May 4th	11am - 6pm

$10 Admission for Opening Night
FREE ADMISSION All Other Days

Click on the image above to get over to the official website.

Redbirds Win This One

I took my daughter to her first ever Cardinals game this past Tuesday.  In her first outing she got to witness a double-pickle play and also an inside-the-park homerun.  The Cards won 7-2 (and all even though we only stayed for a couple of innings - we got to see all 7 runs scored).

My wife has put together some of the pictures from our night over at our family blog.

Table, Pulpit, and Square

A few of the blogs I read and enjoy regularly have recently all started talking about a similar topic - namely, what the local church is supposed to look like. The thoughts these guys are tossing around has consumed me as of late. It seems beautifully simple, yet all-encompassingly complex.

Joe Thorn started it with his post, The Full Paradigm. In it he lays out this concept of the “Table, Pulpit, and Square.” Next, Steve McCoy (aka the Reformissionary) offered up some tweaks with his post, The Church I Pastor: The Missional Triad. Most recently, Kevin Larson chimed in with his own tweaks in a post titled, The Pulpit, The Table, and The Square. I’d encourage you to read these three posts - in that order to catch the gist of it all.

Below are each of these guy’s sketches (in respective order) or how this all takes shape. Again, the posts themselves provide additional detail, but the diagrams are certainly helpful.

McCoy has just finished preaching through a 3-part series regarding his incarnation of the table, pulpit, and square. You can listen to his messages here (see sermons from 4/13/08, 4/20/08, and 4/27/08). McCoy also takes the award for worst image quality (sorry, dude).

Larson is just beginning to preach through this and his messages will begin to become available here.

If you are aware of other incarnations of this philosophy of ministry, I’d love to hear about them through the comments. Joe, Steve, and Kevin - thanks for sharing these. All three have been of extreme benefit to me.

OT History - Part 15

Tonight in the Old Testament Historical Books class, we’ll begin our look at the book of 1 Kings and looking primarily at the life of Solomon. In doing so, we’ll be covering 1 Kings 1-12. I will be providing multiple resources tonight: notes, 1 Kings synthetic outline, 2 Kings synthetic outline, and an OT History Timeline.

We’ll primarily focus on the notes tonight; the other resources will be for the class to use in preparation for next week as we’ll be covering 1 Kings 12 through the end of 2 Kings next week (at a high level).

• 1 Kings 1-12
• 1 Kings Synthetic Outline
• 2 Kings Synthetic Outline
• OT History Timeline

The following are the prep questions for tonight:

1. Read 1 Kings 1-11
2. Note especially David’s charge to Solomon in 2:1-9.
3. Note God’s two appearances to Solomon. When did these appearances occur?
4. Chapter 8 contains Solomon’s great prayer. What stands out to you in this prayer?
5. In chapter 11, Solomon falls away from the Lord. Are we to see this as abrupt, or are there subtle signs throughout the previous chapters that point to a more gradual decline?

*See other resources regarding OT History here.

Piper on the Gospel

Piper can fire me up basically at any point in the week. This is about a 6 minute clip. Nothing fancy. Just the straight truth about our need for the gospel.

HT: purgatorio

How To Use Google Reader

Google Reader is my friend. I want him to be yours too.  Abraham Piper has written a great little post on his wife’s blog regarding Google Reader - why it is useful, and how to set it all up and use it.

I highly commend it to you if you read more than a few blogs on a regular basis.

Read the whole thing here.

(HT: Zach)

My Little Environmentalist

My two (almost three) year old is an environmentalist. She truly cares about keeping the world clean.

Last year around this time we went out to Boston to visit some friends. My wife and I still joke about Iris shouting “OOPSIE!” in the car rental parking lot after the guy in front of us missed the trash can when cleaning out some stuff from his car in the parking lot.

Iris had another shining moment after church yesterday. We were in the drive-through line at Jack In the Box and she happened to notice a stray drink cup in the parking lot. That sparked the discussion: we don’t leave our trash just laying around. Someone was going to have to pick that up. To which my delightful little pal replied: “maybe us.”

So we did. We picked it up, and (after having a a conversation about how we don’t drink out of any cups that aren’t ours) took it to the nearest trash can.

This little incident got me thinking. My two year old can get it right, but we adults don’t seem to. I could start with the guy who left the cup there to begin with. I could talk about everyone else who drove right by it without even giving it a second thought. Or I could focus on myself - I surely wouldn’t have stopped and picked it up if it wasn’t for my 3 foot tall side-kick contributing to my conscience.

What a task to keep the environmentally-wise mind of my daughter intact. And how easily she could be lulled into my own laziness and apathy.

Big Problem: Big Solution

The New Testament affirms that the Gospel of the cross and resurrection of Christ is God’s complete answer to the totality of evil and all its effects within his creation.  But it is the Old Testament which shows us the nature and extent of sin and evil - primarily in the narratives of Genesis 4-11, but thereafter also in the history of Israel and the nations, such as the oppression of the first chapters of Exodus.  It shows us that while evil has its origins outside the human race, human beings are morally accountable to God for our own sin.  It shows us that sin and evil have a corporate as well as an individual dimension, that is, they affect and shape the patterns of social life within which we live, as well as the personal lives we lead.  It show us that sin and evil affect history itself through inescapable cause and effect and a kind of cumulative process through the generations of humanity.  It shows us that there is no area of life on earth in which we are free from the influence of our sin and the sin of others.  In short, the Old Testament portrays to us a very big problem to which there needs to be a very big answer, if there is one at all.

–Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament, Christopher, J.H. Wright, p30.

Privatized Faith?

Pope-on-a-rope joking aside, there is a valuable discussion occurring over at the On Faith blog regarding an important comment that he made last week with respect to the danger of privatized faith. The following post was made by Leith Anderson. I agree with his response to the question posed.

The Question: In his speech to U.S. bishops last week, Pope Benedict XVI said: “Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted . . . To the extent that religion becomes a purely private affair, it loses its very soul.” Do you agree or disagree? Why? Privacy is at the epicenter of faith. As evangelical Christians we believe that a personal commitment to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord is the way to salvation and eternal life. Engagement with others is the leading edge of our faith. Internal faith should be externally expressed. Jesus called us to love and serve God and to love and serve our neighbors. While some focus on what is public I just want to make sure we start with what is private–a right relationship with God. There’s a story about a Dad who cut up a map of the world that was ripped out of a magazine. He gave it to his child to put together as a puzzle. The child assembled and taped it with surprising speed. When the Dad asked how the child replied, “There was a person on the other side. When I put the person together the world came together too.” It’s not either/or, private/public—-get the private right to get the world right too.

Piper on Parenting

John Piper gives a sneak peak at a new book he’s working on regarding marriage and parenting:

The most fundamental task of a mother and father is to show God to the children. Children know their parents before they know God. This is a huge responsibility and should cause every parent to be desperate for God-like transformation. The children will have years of exposure to what the universe is like before they know there is a universe. They will experience the kind of authority there is in the universe and the kind of justice there is in the universe and the kind of love there is in the universe before they meet the God of authority and justice and love who created and rules of the universe. Children are absorbing from dad his strength and leadership and protection and justice and love; and they are absorbing from mother her care and nurture and warmth and intimacy and justice and love—and, of course, all these overlap.

And all this is happening before the child knows anything about God, but it is profoundly all about God. Will the child be able to recognize God for who he really is in his authority and love and justice because mom and dad have together shown the child what God is like. The chief task of parenting is to know God for who he is in his many attributes, and then to live in such a way with our children that we help them see and know this multi-faceted God. And, of course, that will involve directing them always to the infallible portrait of God in the Bible.

The Chaos of 2 Samuel

I can still remember the first time I read through the book of 2 Samuel as a new believer. I remember being blown away that this stuff was in the bible. Just taking a high-level look at the craziness across the chapters reveals:

• Ch1 - execution
• Ch 3 - murder
• Ch 4 - murder, then retribution
• Ch 6 - sudden, unexplainable death
• Ch 11 - Lust, adultery, cover-up, conspiracy
• Ch 13 - Lust, rape, murder
• Ch 14 - deceit
• Ch 15 - conspiracy
• Ch 16 - a little indecent exposure or exhibitionism, if you will
• Ch18 - brutal death
• Ch20 - murder
• Ch 21 - lynching

Real good bed time story reading for the kiddos. Intentionally and thankfully omitted from most children’s Bibles.

The past two weeks, I’ve been teaching through 2 Samuel in our Wednesday night class and what has blown me away is the sheer level of chaos in Israel during this time frame, and David’s resilience and his ability to rely and trust in the Lord.

If you think back to his humble beginnings (the little, scrawny, ruddy, shepherd boy), it is amazing to think that this guy came to become king of Israel and further that he was able to hold it all together in the turbulence of chaos. Granted - he was not perfect (read 2 Samuel 11-12, if you don’t believe me…..but be sure to stop and read Psalm 51 when you hit 2 Samuel 12:13), but he relied on the Lord:

“This God—his way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him. “For who is God, but the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God? This God is my strong refuge and has made my way blameless.”

–2 Samuel 22:31-33 (ESV

Below is a scan of something I sketched out in my journal (for you moleskine junkies out there, I roll with the squared notebook) and transferred to the white-board in our Wednesday session. I’ve found it helpful in keeping all of the names of the individuals in 2 Samuel straight. There are a lot of people involved in this chaotic mess and so diagramming it out helps to understand who’s who.  You can get a PDF of the diagram by clicking on the image below.

 

 

 

Oprah’s Jesus

Grant Swank of the Canadian Free Press writes that:

Oprah Winfrey has solidified her spirit of antiChrist by disclaiming the unique incarnation of God in Christ by blurring Christ as “energy”.

Read his article, Oprah’s Jesus = ‘Energy’ for a look at how dangerous her views really are.

New Research on Evangelism

Mark Kelly pens an excellent article on LifeWay’s website titled, “Evangelism Must Begin Beyond the Sanctuary“ The article contains some research from Ed Stetzer and has implications with respect to how we view the unchurched.

Some of the factoids that stood out to me were:

• More than half the 1,402 respondents in a 2007 study of unchurched adults said they never wonder whether they would go to heaven if they died.
• A soon-to-be published 2007 survey of more than 2,500 adult church members found only 25 percent agreed they “spend time building friendships with non-Christians for the purpose of sharing Christ with them.” A full 38 percent actually disagreed with the statement and 36 percent were noncommittal about it.

OT History - Part 14

This week we’ll be focusing on 2 Samuel 13-24 and continuing our look at the reign of David. We’ll give special attention to Absalom and also David’s census in Chapter 24.

Below are the class notes for tomorrow night and also the prep questions:

2 Samuel 13-24

1. Why doesn’t David take action against Amnon?
2. What is a result of that (i.e. how does David’s inaction play out in Absalom’s life)?
3. Take special note of the chaos: lust, rape, murder, deceit, conspiracy, the obnoxious protestor, indecent exposure, brutal death, murder (again), lynching.
4. Take special note of any insight into the heart of David that you see.
5. Read 24:1 and then read 1 Chronicles 21:1. What’s up with the census?

Rob Bell: Universal Atonement?

Again, I state that Rob Bell (pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, MI) has been the target of much criticism in the blogosphere. I’ve written some about it here - linking in some audio comments by D.A. Carson.

As I’ve stated before, I typically have not quite understood all the flurry of furry against Bell and I’ve also noted that our Small Group has been going through the Nooma Series and having excellent God-centered discussions (see my post titled Rob Bell on Death).

With that said, a couple of factors have brought me to write this post. The first was the most recent Nooma video titled Breath (watch the video for yourself in two parts on YouTube: Part 1, Part 2). Some of the comments that Bell made in this video were a little disturbing and confusing - obscure is perhaps a better way of stating it. The confusion surrounded his use of the word “spirit” and he seemed to imply - or perhaps could be heard as saying that all humans have the Spirit of God in them. Like I said: confusing and obscure.

The second driving factor for me writing this post is an article I stumbled across by Geoff Thomas over at Banner of Truth. The article is on the topic of Limited Atonement and you can read it here. Now for many, when you hear the words “Limited Atonement,” your Hyper-Calvinist red alarms start going off and so you shine the bat symbol to all of Gotham and run and hide. Please don’t do that. I do consider myself a Calvinist, but the message here is something that all Christians need to hear.

See the following excerpt from Geoff Thomas’ article and note the stuff I’ve tried to bold face (note: I do wish that he would have made a better reference to the specific stuff he was reading from Bell, but nonetheless). I realize that some reading this might not fully subscribe to the doctrine of “Limited Atonement,” (the “L” in TULIP for those of you with the bat symbol still blaring) but ask you to also strongly consider the alternative (universal atonement). If you’ve got time, I’d love to hear your comments.

I was recently reading some words of a preacher preaching a universal atonement. He was trying to impose that faulty logic, that philosophical system, upon the New Testament. This is what he said, and it made me quite ill to read it. The speaker was a man named Rob Bell, the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, one of the American mega-churches and a leader in the Emerging Church movement. He said this:

When Christ died on the cross he died for everybody.
Everybody.
Everywhere.
Every tribe, every nation, every tongue, every people group.
Jesus said that when he was lifted up, he would draw all men to himself.
All people. Everywhere.
Everybody’s sins on the cross with Jesus.
Forgiveness is true for everybody.

And then Bell goes on . . .

And this reality extends beyond this life.
Heaven is full of forgiven people.
Hell is full of forgiven people.
Heaven is full of forgiven people God loves, whom Jesus died for.
Hell is full of forgiven people God loves, whom Jesus died for.
The difference is how we choose to live, which story we choose to live in, which version of reality we trust. Ours or God’s.

I find that so shocking because what good does this man think the blood of Christ has done for him or for anyone? He thinks that the blood of Christ actually saves no one from hell. Jesus can die for you but you can still go to the place of woe. The damned in hell were as much an object of Jesus Christ’s forgiveness as the saved in heaven, and so for all those in hell Christ died in vain, so ineffectual was Jesus’ dying. He loved them; he gave himself for them and yet they ended up in the lake of fire with the beast and the false prophet. Such an atonement I despise. I reject it. As Spurgeon once said, ‘I had rather believe a limited atonement that is efficacious for all men for whom it was intended, than a universal atonement that is not efficacious for anybody, except the will of man be joined with it.’ What a religion that magnifies the will of man above the power of God! What saves from hell according to Rob Bell? It is man’s choice with his free will that did it. That man was a smart cat! That’s what made the difference. He got to heaven because he made a good choice, and he will have eternity to preen himself on that. Heaven was not decisively gained by the blood of Christ but by human decision.

We have been taught by the Spirit and by the Bible of the power of the blood of God the Son who gave himself up that we saved sinners might be his bride. Jesus died to ‘to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.’

That is what the dying love of Christ has accomplished. If he died to redeem a sinner by hanging in the place of a sinner, propitiating the wrath of God towards a favoured sinner, reconciling God to us by his royal death, then we shall never perish; not one of all these blood-bought sinners shall end in hell. The blood of Christ will forbid it.

Dear dying Lamb Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power
Till all the ransomed church of God
Be saved to sin no more.

Men and women, cling to the Bible’s teaching on the limited and definite and effectual purpose of the blood of Christ. That will then be your comfort both in life and in death.

Challies on Parenting, Authority, and Sin

Tim Challies has an excellent piece on his blog right now on parenting, authority, and sin titled Hearing and Heeding God’s Word.

Blogs to Read

One of the blogs that I always read (Steve McCoy) posts on 5 blogs he always reads:

Drew Goodmanson Jonathan Dodson Tim Chester Jeremy Pryor Joe Thorn

Reason for God - Part 11

Some excerpts from chapter 9 (pp. 143-158)  Tim Keller’s, The Reason for God. The title of the chapter is “The Knowledge of God.”

• I think people in our culture know unavoidably that there is a God, but they are repressing what they know.
• It is common to hear people say, “No one should impose their moral views on others, because everyone has the right to find truth inside him or herself.” This belief leaves the speaker open to a series of very uncomfortable questions.
  • Aren’t there people in the world who are doing things you believe are wrong — things that they should stop doing no matter what they personally believe about the correctness of their behavior?
  • If you do (and everyone does!), doesn’t that mean that you do believe that there is some kind of moral standard that people should abide by regardless of their individual convictions?
  • This raises a question. Why is it impossible (in practice) for anyone to be a consistent moral relativist even when they claim that they are?
  • The answer is that we all have a pervasive, powerful, unavoidable belief not only in moral values but also in moral obligation.
• We do not only have moral feelings, but we also have an ineradicable belief that moral standards exist, outside of us, by which our internal moral feelings are evaluated. Why? Why do we think those moral standards exist?
• There is only one way out of this conundrum. We can pick up the Biblical account of things and see if it explains our moral sense any better than a secular view.
  • If the world was made by a God of peace, justice, and love, then that is why we know that violence, oppression, and hate are wrong.
  • If the world is fallen, broken, and needs to be redeemed, that explains the violence and disorder we see.
• We all live as if it is better to seek peace instead of war, to tell the truth instead of lying, to care and nurture rather than destroy.
  • We believe that these choices are not pointless, that it matters which way we choose to live. Yet if the Cosmic Bench is truly empty, then “who sez” that one choice is better than the others?
  • We can argue about it, but it’s just pointless arguing, endless litigation.
  • If the Bench is truly empty, then the whole span of human civilization, even if it lasts a few million years, will be just an infinitesimally brief spark in relation to the oceans of dead time that preceded it and will follow it.
  • There will be no one around to remember any of it. Whether we are loving or cruel in the end would make no difference at all.