Full and Paid

Currently: Grading Mad Assignment and Entering Scores into My Gradebook
Currently Reading: Excerpts from Like Fourteen Books by My Insatiable Quest for Understanding

I think one of the greatest things to realize is that since Christ's death effectively absorbed the wrath of God that was focused on individuals prior to regeneration and this removal of wrath allows for salvation that is "applied" at a certain point in time, children of God no longer experience punishment in the same manner as those who remain "objects of wrath."
Thanks be to God for his free gift of mercy and salvation given to all that believe.

Zappy!

Bible Study Magazine and Mars Hill are giving away 20 copies of Mark Driscoll’s new book, Vintage Church. Not only that, but they are also giving away five subscriptions to Bible Study Magazine and a copy of their Bible Study Library software! Enter to win on the Bible Study Magazine Mark Driscoll page, then take a look at all the tools they have to take your Bible study to the next level!

Come Original

Currently Hearing: Greatest Hits 1995-2003 by 311
Currently Reading: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Let's get mindless for a while.
I haven't posted a life update in what seems like ages - just intense theological quotes and scrumptious sections of what I have been reading (dee-lish).
Anyways, I am currently sitting in my "I" period 11th grade Bible class watching over them as they take an exam. I am really proud of this test - just the right amount of information to keep their minds and hands working for the whole period.

On a more nauseating note, I have been trying to get my financial information squared away for my enrollment at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California for this upcoming September. That has sucked (duh). Anything having to do with government forms and red tape makes me cringe. Needless to say, I will be elated when it is complete and I can consummate my academic and spiritual relationship with this fine institution.

While I am at it, let's keep rambling (I can picture my Mom reading this screen - so, if you are out there, Mom, imagine my voice uttering these words - this is for you). I think one of the worst parts about being in a foreign country is the frustration of not being able to get books. I will say that it has forced me to find tons of internet sites, archives, and resource libraries that are public domain (a.k.a., "free"). Anyways, I feel like I am compiling a monstrous list of "must-reads" that will cause me to just snap when I get back to the old red, white, and blue. I could order them off of Amazon and pay the intense shipping tax, but then I would have to buy three suitcases and pay to bring them home in a few months. So, I will continue to stare at a computer screen, download free books from Desiring God's Resource Library, read endless articles on Monergism, and bide my time until I can reak havoc in America and test the strength of my bookshelves.

I guess that is all for now. In closing, I would like to recommend some great websites where any other "God-dorks" can find some pretty nifty stuff for Free-Ninety-Nine.

Desiring God - go here and click the "Resource Library" tab for tons of sermons, articles, and whole books!
Monergism - a killer website with TONS of Reformed resources (this is for the Calvinist in you)
Christian Classics Ethereal Library - awesome site for primary resources and early Church writings (thank you, Dr. Jenkins)
Project Gutenberg - a site with some books that are public domain
Online Christian Library - decent site with some Christian stuff to read
Christian Publication Resource Foundation - A solid compilation of Reformed essays
The Gospel Coalition - Themelios Magazine is an online publication headed up by some solid, Bible-believing scholars and reputable contributors from all over the world

Editor's Note

I have realized that my blog has become less about my original thoughts and more about other people's thoughts that I tend to agree with...
Well, after you read this, you too will realize that they state things much more clearly and eloquently than I could imagine...

This is a quote by Jonathan Edwards in regard to the necessity of evil in the display of the glory of God...
Attn. all liberals and John Sanders-lovers: load your weapons...

“It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God’s glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God. It is not proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested, and another not at all; for then the effulgence would not answer the reality. For the same reason it is not proper that one should be manifested exceedingly, and another but very little. It is highly proper that the effulgent glory of God should answer his real excellency; that the splendour should be answerable to the real and essential glory, for the same reason that it is proper and excellent for God to glorify himself at all.

Thus it is necessary, that God’s awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God’s glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all.

If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God’s holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God’s grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much happiness soever he bestowed, his goodness would not be so much prized and admired, and the sense of it not so great, as we have elsewhere shown. We little consider how much the sense of good is heightened by the sense of evil, both moral and natural.

And as it is necessary that there should be evil, because the display of the glory of God could not but be imperfect and incomplete without it, so evil is necessary, in order to the highest happiness of the creature, and the completeness of that communication of God, for which he made the world; because the creature’s happiness consists in the knowledge of God, and sense of his love. And if the knowledge of him be imperfect, the happiness of the creature must be proportionably imperfect; and the happiness of the creature would be imperfect upon another account also; for, as we have said, the sense of good is comparatively dull and flat, without the knowledge of evil.”

The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Remarks on Important Theological Controversies (Chapter 3: Concerning the Divine Decrees in General, and Election in Particular), Originally published in 1834.

Help Wanted

Since when did it become cool to slam the Church instead of lovingly bringing about change?
I am not talking about helpful critique for the sake of alteration (this is incredibly loving) - I simply mean, why is it cool to spitefully rock out on the Church?
I can only affirm that this is sinful...

Ta Dah!

"If Christ is an all-satisfying treasure and promises to provide all our needs, even through famine and nakedness, then to live as though we had all the same values as the world would betray him - I have in mind mainly how we use our money and how we feel about our possessions. I hear the haunting words of Jesus, 'Do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things" (Matthew 6:31-32). In other words, if we look like our lives are devoted to getting and maintaining things, we will look like the world, and that will not make Christ look great. He will look like a religious side-interest that may be useful for escaping hell in the end, but doesn't make much differece in what we live and love here. He will not look like an all-satisfying treasure. And that wil not make others glad in God."

- John Piper
Don't Waste Your Life, p. 107-08

Quotes Are the New Blogs...

"Union with Christ in his death and resurrection ... is the foundation of sanctification in Reformed theology. It is rooted, not in humanity and their achievement of holiness or sanctification, but in what God has done in Christ, and for us in union with him. Rather than view Christians first and foremost in the microcosmic context of their own progress, the Reformed doctrine first of all sets them in the macrocosm of God's activity in redemptive history. It is seeing oneself in this context that enables the individual Christian to grow in true holiness."

- Sinclair Ferguson

We Want Some More! We Want Some More!

Currently Wondering: If Chris Brown Assaulted Rihanna by the Yahoo! Mail News Feed

I am feeling frisky, so I am going to post 3 quotes today:

"One of the reasons we are not as Christ-centered and cross-saturated as we shold be is that we have not realized that everything - every good, and everthing bad that God turns for the good of his redeemed children - was purchased by the death of Christ for us" (p. 51).

"Suffering is God's design in the sin-soaked world (Romans 8:20). It portrays sin's horror for the world to see. It punishes sin's guilt for those who do not believe in Christ. It breaks sin's power for those who take up their cross and follow Jesus. And because sin is the belittling of the all-satisfying glory of God, the suffering that breaks its power is a severe mercy" (p. 62)

"...when Jesus Christ is the object of our faith there is a trust. He himself is what we need. If we only trust Christ to give us gifts and not himself as the all-satisfying gify, then we do not trust him in a way that honors him as our treasure. We simply honor the gifts. They are what we really want, not him. So biblical faith in Jesus must mean that we trust him to give us what we need most - namely, himself. That means that faith itself must include at its essence a trasuring of Christ above all things" (p. 70).

Another...

"But whatever you do, find the God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion of your life, and find your way to say it and live for it and die for it. And you will made a difference that lasts. You will not waste your life."

- John Piper
Don't Waste Your Life, p. 47

A God Without Christ

Currently Hearing: When I Go Deaf by Low

"...it is [essential] to exult explicitly in the excellence of Christ crucified for sinners and risen from the dead. Christ must be explicit in our God-talk. It will not do, in this day of pluralism, to talk about the glory of God in vague ways. God without Christ is no God. And a no-God cannot save or satisfy the soul. Following a no-God - whatever his name or whatever his religion - will be a wasted life. God-in-Christ is the only true God and the only path to joy. Everything I have said so far must now be related to Christ."

- John Piper
Don't Waste Your Life, page 38

To Make Much of You...

For the next little while, I will probably be posting mad quotes from Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper. It just deserves it.

"...[Many people] do not feel loved when they are told that God created them for his glory. They feel used. This is understandable given the way love has been almost completely distorted in our world. For most people, to be loved is to be made much of. Almost everything in our Western culture serves this distortion of love. We are taught in a thousand ways that love means increasing someone's self-esteem. Love is helping someone feel good about themselves. Love is giving someone a mirror and hleping him like what he sees.
This is not what the Bible means by the love of God. Love is doing what is best for someone. But making self the object of our highest afections is not best for us. It is, in fact, a lethal distraction. We were made to see and savor God - and in savoring him, to be supremely satisfied, and thus spread in all the world the worth of his presence. Not to show people the all-satisfying God is not to love them. To make them feel good about themslves when they were made to feel good about seeing God is like taking someone to the Alps and locking them in a room full of mirrors."

John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life, page 33