"Paul was writing his own life story, but Jesus stole his pen."

Love that!

(From this post by our favorite Gospel-wakened Ninja)

For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a ninja. I’m out. I remain committed to martial arts as always but not to being “ninja” or to being part of ninja stuff. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile,disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years,... I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

From the message in church today. This isn't an exact quote, though I was taking notes as fast as I could. The message was from Acts 4-5

We are programming ourselves to death, so much so that we miss the point of the Gospel. The early church was out of step with the world system. Because of this, the early church had influence, inviting notice and persecution.

We're not turning the world upside down. We're letting the world turn us inside out.

On a related note, read this post by our favorite Author-Pastor-Blogger, and check out the very interesting conversation in the comments thread as well.

Read this tonight. What a challenging reminder.

"It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to." - C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

[H/T The quote rotation on my other site]

"We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

Working on my sermon for Sunday on Luke 12:49-13:9. Found this jewel by Darrell Bock in the NIV Application Commentary:

Much of 12:49-59 raises the issue of judgment and accountability before God. Yet all too often we try to package Jesus for our culture today as if sin were a minor topic on his agenda. This is not only the work of skeptical scholars like those noted above, it is also found in the way we preach Jesus in evangelism. For all the value of seeker-sensitive approaches, if as a result of trying to market Jesus churches soften the message at this point, then they distort the gospel and do not preach the Jesus who offers renewal of life.

To remove accountability to God for sin is to remove one of the realities that make grace so powerful. In the effort to make the gospel palatable, we risk emasculating it of its most precious truth, that God has paid the debt for our failure and has washed it white as snow. Ironically in trying to exalt God's love by ignoring sin, we remove the most powerful evidence of its presence.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

- C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

[H/T The Inklings]

"My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” - John 18:36

In a reference to this passage, our pastor made the following statements:

"Jesus did not come to bring political reformation. He was not interested in making things better in the political realm. He came to save people from eternal death."

"We're more interested in watching Hardball and Hannity than spreading His message. We're more ready to declare 'I'm a Republican' or 'I'm a Democrat' rather than proclaiming Christ."

[here he mentioned that he was quoting someone else] "If Jesus were to come today a lot of Christians would want to make him President of the United States. That would be a step down for the Son of God."

I found this very refreshing. As you can probably tell if you've been reading this blog for very long, I generally vote Republican. Our pastor is not an edgy 20-something guy. He's forty and he hunts, and we're in a very red part of a very red state.

Here's another one, from the end of the message: "Church was never meant to be a building where we all come and hide."

Good and challenging stuff.

John Piper, in this thirty year old sermon, positively nails a subject that's troubled me for a long time.

Some background: I have, on occasion, taught a spiritual gifts "seminar". At first I thought it was pretty cool stuff, but I became more and more troubled by the a) intense focus on self-searching required in the class, to "identify my spiritual gift" and b) the reliance on self-graded surveys to determine one's gift or gifts. I don't mean to suggest there's no value there. I have taken those surveys and they've tended to agree with what I think my spiritual gifts are.

But I didn't discover my spiritual gifts by taking a survey. I discovered them by doing ministry; often by basically stumbling into a ministry that I wasn't expecting. Like when I was twenty and some youth minister, in a fit of God-breathed insanity, asked me to teach a week's worth of Bible study on a passage I'd never even read before, to a bunch of sixteen year old kids that I didn't know, at a summer camp, with about four hours notice.

Not very wise, perhaps, but that one event was life-changing.

We're about to jump into a few weeks on spiritual gifts in our Friday night Young Singles home group, and I'm going to base these few weeks largely off this one sermon. An excerpt below:

I think it would be fair to say also from this text [1 Thess 3:2] that you shouldn't bend your mind too much trying to label your spiritual gift before you use it. That is, don't worry about whether you can point to prophecy or teaching or wisdom or knowledge or healing or miracles or mercy or administration, etc., and say, "That's mine." The way to think is this: The reason we have spiritual gifts is so that we can strengthen other people's faith; here is someone whose faith is in jeopardy; how can I help him? Then do or say what seems most helpful and if the person is helped then you may have discovered one of your gifts.

. . .

I really believe that the problem of not knowing our spiritual gifts is not a basic problem. More basic is the problem of not desiring very much to strengthen other people's faith. Human nature is more prone to tear down than it is to build up. The path of least resistance leads to grumbling and criticism and gossip, and many there be that follow it. But the gate is narrow and the way is strewn with obstacles which leads to edification and the strengthening of faith. So the basic problem is becoming the kind of person who wakes up in the morning, thanks God for our great salvation and then says, "Lord, O how I want to strengthen people's faith today. Grant that at the end of this day somebody will be more confident of Your promises and more joyful in Your grace because I crossed his path." The reason I say becoming this kind of person is more basic than finding out your spiritual gift, is that when you become this kind of person the Holy Spirit will not let your longings go to waste. He will help you find ways to strengthen the faith of others and that will be the discovery of your gifts. So let's apply ourselves to becoming the kind of people more and more who long to strengthen each other's faith.

Emphasis mine.

"What do you see in Christ’s right hand? Seven stars; yet how insignificant they appear when you get a sight of his face! They are stars, and there are seven of them; but who can see seven stars, or, for the matter of that, seventy thousand stars, when the sun shineth in his strength? How sweet it is, when the Lord himself is so present in a congregation that the preacher, whoever he may be, is altogether forgotten! I pray you, dear friends, when you go to a place of worship, always try to see the Lord’s face rather than the stars in his hand; look at the sun, and you will forget the stars.”

- Charles Spurgeon, quoted in Guzik's commentary on Revelation 1

This is such a great reminder to me, as both a teacher and as a learner.

And to all of us, in our often rock-star church culture.

Now, back to prepping for Revelation 1 . . .

We are not victims of God's will, we are willing participants and grateful recipients.

- Neal McHenry

The words of a young man who just lost his wife, the mother of four young children, to brain cancer.

That's reality, and wisdom born of suffering.

Speechless . . .

I have heard it said, "God didn't die for frogs. So he was responding to our value as humans." This turns grace on its head. We are worse off than frogs. They have not sinned. They have not rebelled and treated God with the contempt of being inconsequential in their lives. God did not have to die for frogs. They aren't bad enough. We are. Our debt is so great, only a divine sacrifice could pay it.

There is only one explanation for God's sacrifice for us. It is not us. It is "the riches of his grace" (Ephesians 1:7). It is all free. It is not a response to our worth. It is the overflow of his infinite worth. In fact, that is what divine love is in the end: a passion to enthrall undeserving sinners, at great cost, with what will make us supremely happy forever, namely, his infinite beauty.

- John Piper, Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. ~ Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda

I saw this quote as the heading of an editorial a while back... and since we also have it in our quote rotation here at thinklings, it got me thinking, "Did Goebbels really say that? And if so,what did he mean?"

So here's what I found out from some internet research. It is listed at a quote website although I don't know if you can even trust websites anymore. It bugs me to run into quotes without a reference to when it was said or where it was written. (Though I've been guilty of just listing the author without saying where I found it myself.) I wish that everyone would say where and when a quote came from. In this day and age where anyone can say anything on the internet or in an email, it is all the more important. I'm a real stickler for authenticity and I try never to attribute a quote to someone unless I can personally verify it.

And so the quotes website I link to above may be just proliferating a myth. I never found an actual citation for this quote. I did however learn from wikiquote, if that can be trusted, that a similar quote is often misattributed.

Misattributed
* But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success. -o Actually from "War Propaganda", in volume 1, chapter 6 of Mein Kampf (1925), by Adolf Hitler.

* (multiple alternatives) If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. // If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. // If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. // If you repeat a lie long enough, it becomes truth. // If you repeat a lie many times, people are bound to start believing it.
o no reliable source; probably misquotations of the Big Lie idea

The "Big Lie" idea was not Goebbels revealing some secret of Nazi propaganda. (At least not willingly.) His point in context was that it is the British who are lying. Oh the irony, that this quote has been repeated so often and attributed to Goebbels that it doesn't seem to be questioned anymore.

The following is an authentic Goebbels quote. Or at least I think it is, becomes it comes from wikiquote and the actual original source is cited.

That is of course rather painful for those involved. One should not as a rule reveal one's secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

* "Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik" ("Churchill's Lie Factory"), 12 January 1941, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1941), pp. 364-369
* This and similar lines in Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf about what he claimed to be a strategem of Jewish lies using "the principle & which is quite true in itself & that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily," are often misquoted or paraphrased as: "The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed."

Here's my conclusion: It looks like Goebbels never said what is attributed to him at the top of this post, or the more common, "If you tell a lie often enough (or big enough) it will be believed."

And if he did say that or something like it, I don't think he meant it as it appears - Like the inside secret confession of a Nazi propagandist...though that implication makes it rather delicious for the modern day propagandist...er opinion writer. Drawing a conclusion from the actually verifiable quotes and speeches of Goebbels, if he did say anything like this, he most likely meant it as a criticism of what his enemies were doing. (i.e. claiming that Jews and the Allies were the liars.) He was not admitting that he was a purveyor of lies. (Although you and I know he was an evil liar, that's probably not what he meant.)

Here's a pretty good selection of Goebbels speeches and articles.

So doubting that he said it in the first place, and believing that if he did, he was actually criticizing Jews or the English, I will never use that quote again. That's my take.

If there's one thing I hate more than a made-up or misattributed quote, it's a quote taken out of context. Imagine how shocked I was when I learned that when Mark Twain said, "It's not the parts of the Bible that I don't understand that trouble me, it's the ones that I do understand." He meant something entirely different than how many pastors and books had quoted it to me. I had heard it quoted as meaning that rather than Christians spending too much time on the difficult passages, we should spend more time dealing with the parts we do understand. i.e. we should spend more time obeying, and less time worrying about who the sons of God were that married the daughters of men.

So in researching the quote for something I was working on to make sure it was authentic, I found out that Twain was actually criticizing the Bible! When he said that the parts he understood troubled him, he was talking about God commanding the Israelites to slaughter men, women and children. He was explaining why he didn't believe the Bible was the word of God, and criticizing how awful it was.

So how about you? Can you shed light on the authenticity and meaning of the Goebbels quote?

Is there another quote that people use all the time that is wrong, misattributed or out of context?

One of my favorite Luther quotes:

I first lay down these two propositions, concerning spiritual liberty and servitude.

A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to everyone.

-- Martin Luther

“The Lord held to this orderly plan in administering the covenant of his mercy: as the day of full revelation approached with the passing of time, the more he increased each day the brightness of its manifestation. Accordingly, at the beginning when the first promise of salvation was given to Adam [Gen. 3:15] it glowed like a feeble spark. Then, as it was added to, the light grew in fullness breaking forth increasingly and shedding its radiance more widely. At last — when all the clouds were dispersed — Christ the Sun of Righteousness fully illumined the whole earth.”

- John Calvin

The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.
-- Hebrews 1:3

The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.
-- Revelation 21:23

Perhaps I'm biased, because the author is a very close relative of mine, but this post on divorce, marriage and the Gospel is one of the best I've ever read.

Money quote:

Marriage is sacred because of what it represents. The bond itself is the Incarnation. Two become one flesh, the burdens and troubles of one become the burdens of the other. The two carry each other, love each other, show mercy to one another, forgive one another, and and lift one another up above themselves. This is why Christ called his gift of Redemption a marriage. The one true and perfect Groom, brings his wounded, unfaithful Bride in and replaces her filthy rags with a wedding dress, kisses her scars and lavishes her with his all-surpassing love. He parades her down the aisle for all to see, and truly makes her worthy and good and beautiful. It is the one marriage that not even death can tear apart.

Does God forgive divorcees? Yes, yes, yes! Will he forgive an arrogant, lying idiot like me? Yes! Divorce is the failure to live up to a sacred oath, but the wonderful truth is that Jesus never goes back on his word. We are unfaithful and unaccommodating and untrusting, and He still goes out looking for us and finds us, even in our sin, and makes us new.

Highly recommended: read the whole thing . . .

I was just looking for Easter Poems for our Easter Bulletin and I found a picture of C.S. Lewis' wife's grave. The engraving has a mini-poem. Here it is:

"Here the whole world (stars, water, air
And field, and forest as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hope that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day."

How awesome is that! What he's saying, is that Easter makes a difference. For those of us who are in Christ, just as Jesus had his "Easter day", his Resurrection day, so will we.

And the reference to "Lenten lands" (the same as Douglas Greshem's autobiography) is, if I understand it right a reference to the fact that "Lent" is the days of preparation up until Easter. So living here on earth was for Joy, as it is all Christians, the days of preparation for her very own Easter Day...

Because Christ did it first!

Lent means "40" and is a reference to the 40 years Moses spent in the wilderness preparing to lead his people from slavery, and the 40 years Israel spent in the wilderness preparing for the Promised Land, and the 40 days Jesus spent preparing for his ministry.

So if this earthly life of ours are our "Lenten Lands" then we are in the wilderness preparing for exodus from slavery, preparing for the Promised Land, preparing for ministry(service) in heaven...and preparing for our own Easter Day!

We are preparing for our Resurrection day. We will each have one, because Christ had one too. That's part of the joy of Easter. Because Jesus walked out of his grave, alive, more alive than ever before, gloriously victorious over death, so will you, because he went first.

The first "Easter" guaranteed that there will be many more...one for every Christian.

I think that's awesome.

Perhaps you Lewis scholars can elaborate on the meaning of this poem more for me....like what does "holy poverty mean? And to whose mind is he referring in the first two lines? Joy's or God's? I love the way he rhymes this whole thing.

AND I'm still looking for a good Easter verse, so please put any suggestions in comments. Who knows, maybe it'll show up in our church bulletin. :)

The cost for the recipient of God’s grace is nothing—and no price could be higher for arrogant people to pay.

- Dan Allender

As seen on The Spyglass

"We are all ministers of the Gospel. Some of us just happen to be clergymen."

-- Martin Luther

Have you ever heard that? Man, I've been hearing that saying all my life.

There are all sorts of descriptions that follow that intro. Here's two I heard recently:

Those who keep score and those who don't.

Those who think and those that feel.

Respond in comments.

In the spirit of this post, you have a choice.

There are those people who will suggest other "two kinds of people" sayings and those who will tell us what kind of person they are based on one (or all) of the suggetions.

Which one are you?