Guidance and Sanity

Although I consider myself something of a moderate charismatic, or ‘charismatic with a seat-belt’ as Driscoll calls it, one of the things that freaks me out in a lot of charismatic circles is the wacky things that get done to ‘discern’ God’s will. It’s really not just a pet-peeve on my side, it actually comes more from seeing people badly damaged pastorally through terrible advice on this subject. Keeping this in mind I was extremely excited to discover that Kevin DeYoung’s new book will directly address this issue. His book is entitled “Just Do Something: How to Make a Decision Without Dreams, Visions, Fleeces, Open Doors, Random Bible Verses, Casting Lots, Liver Shivers, Writing in the Sky, etc.” -what a fantastic title.

Here’s the Amazon blurb:

Hyper-spiritual approaches to finding God’s will don’t work. It’s time to try something new: Give up.

Pastor and author Kevin DeYoung counsels Christians to settle down, make choices, and do the hard work of seeing those choices through. Too often, he writes, God’s people tinker around with churches, jobs, and relationships, worrying that they haven’t found God’s perfect will for their lives. Or—even worse—they do absolutely nothing, stuck in a frustrated state of paralyzed indecision, waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting for clear, direct, unmistakable direction.

But God doesn’t need to tell us what to do at each fork in the road. He’s already revealed his plan for our lives: to love him with our whole hearts, to obey His Word, and after that, to do what we like.

No need for hocus-pocus. No reason to be directionally challenged. Just do something.

Now here’s the fascinating and extremely encouraging part – get this: The forward is written by Joshua Harris, a well known charismatic leader. Not only that but DeYoung will be speaking at NEXT 2009, a charismatic conference. I’m loving the way in which charismatics and conservatives are slowly beginning to come together and make the gospel central and not particular emphases. In the process they’re both learning from each other – epic.

Birthday Nostalgia: Posts that Stirred the Pot

Being the birthday and all its time for another trip down memory lane. We’ve already had one trip back into the archives to find posts that I wished had received a bit of a wider readership but today’s nostalgic trip picks up the posts that drew a bit of heat and fire for various reasons. I suppose you can’t really write a blog with conviction and not stir up the pot from time to time. Well here are the posts that either stirred up others or posts where I got a opinionated:

Charismatics and Conservatives Together (15/09/07) – funny that the controversy this post stirred up had little to do with Charismatics or Conservatives coming together. Go figure.

Witherington and Progressive Revelation (21/09/07) – on this one, as much as I respect and admire him, as much as I and read his blog daily, I just couldn’t stomach Dr. Witherington’s understanding of the unfolding of doctrinal accuracy through the course of redemptive history. In fact I still can’t stomach it or justify it from scripture.

Reading Romans 7 and the Evangelical Conviction (11/10/07) – proof that even your own teammates shoot you sometimes (just kidding Kim – all’s forgiven).

“God is Dead” – But was he ever alive? (26/10/07) – a catchy title goes wrong…

Why I don’t Stone People (14/11/07) – I seem to have a fan base of atheists who visit this blog quite regularly. This post resulted in a bit of frivolous banter between us.

Tutu Gay Rant (19/11/07) – This little rant didn’t really stir too much but it did cause someone to write the longest comment I’ve ever seen on a blog.

What is the Gospel – An Open Forum (28/11/07) – ok so this post didn’t really draw all that much heat, except for that one guy disagreeing with me, Tim Keller, I mean who does he think he is? It’s not like he’s got a Facebook appreciation group that’s bigger than all my friends combined!

Proudly South African (17/12/07) – who knew that being a patriot would rattle the cages a bit?

Golden Compass Christian Hernia (17/12/07) – I managed to unsettle some folks twice in one day! There’s a simple math formula for topics like the Golden Compass if you haven’t figured it out yet. It goes like this: Golden Compass + Christian Blog = Controversy + Lot’s of hits! I couldn’t resist throwing my two cents in.

So far 2008 has been controversy free. Although I’m probably not going to shy away from the posts that stir a bit let’s just pray that I stir in godly way – there is such a thing.

Check out this interview

Adrian Warnock’s blog has an interesting interview with Rob Rufus, one of the New Covenant International team leaders, regarding the word and the spirit.

Rob Rufus makes a great comment about charasmatics and conservative evangelicals that I think has much wisdom in it. He says at the end of the interview ‘…we need to be humble and realize that evangelicals have a rich legacy that we can learn from, and I think we can enrich each other.’

Take a look at the interview.

Charismatics and Conservatives Together

Michael Jensen mentions a wise guy from back in the day who hit the nail on the head when it came to spirituality. He thinks that a good reading of Jonathan Edward’s ‘Religious Affections’ would be a good rebuke to both conservatives and charismatics. Have a look.