Father…please help me to repent on a continual basis, as well as all others who name You as Lord and Savior. Help us not to be a discredit to the Gospel through our wicked works. Set us apart, O Lord, to bring glory and honor to You! In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
I found this prayer on a comment list on John Piper’s Facebook page. I added it here because I agree and concure whole-heartedly with it. I will make it my prayer.
After watching American Idol last night, I am ashamed to admit that it has taken me this long to finally ban the show from my house. It is the embodiment of worldliness and is inconsistent with a Biblical worldview. For some time now I have had reservations about allowing my family to watch the show, but they liked it and I am cautious not to be a “tyrant” of legalism in the name of holiness.
However, the line must be drawn here. Everything from the songs that are chosen, outfits of the contestants (and judges), remarks of the judges, and particularly the guest performers go against what I know that Bible to teach about believers coming out and being separate from the world. But really, could I expect anything else? I mean, American Idol is the world’s party and for them to behave any other way would be impossible.
It is not a family show and it is not really a singing competition anymore either. As I watched it with my family last night, I said to my oldest daughter, “Abby, this is a picture of the broad way that Jesus talked about in Matthew 7.” Many will go this way. I do not want my family to be on the broad way. We belong to the narrow, the hard, the tight way — the way that Jesus said few will find.
American Idol does not represent that “way.” Other changes are no doubt soon to come.
18
May 09
“Like Waking Up From The Longest Dream…”
I’ve recently been reading Finally Alive by John Piper on the subject of the new birth. It is a great book and begins with the story of C.S. Lewis’ conversion/regeneration/new birth. Lewis states:
That description of the born again experience has stuck with me that past couple days and I recalled to mind an old Keith Green song that similarly bears the same truth. The following excerpt from Green’s “Your Love Broke Through” says basically the same thing Lewis said of his conversion experience:
In thinking about how waking up from a long sleep reflects the new birth experience, I have attempted to draw from my own “sleeping” experience. When asleep, I am not conscious of my body, soul, mind, even my very existence. I lie there in bed dead to all awareness or conciousness until the moment I wake. After waking I am fully aware of my existence and begin to “live” again.
The deadness of the unregenerate heart causes it to be unaware that it is spiritually dead. Ephesians 2 says that we were dead in trespasses and sins. Titus 3 says that we were saved when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared. We are dead in sins until God appears and wakes us up through regeneration, or the new birth. I do not want to diminish our dead and desperate condition before God by using the phrase “wakes us up.” We are dead in sin. The rigamortis has set in. We cannot nor will not make any move toward God and repentance until the Holy Spirit regenerates our dead hearts and breathes spiritual life into us. At that point, the conversion experience is like a new birth, like waking up from the longest sleep.
When I sleep, I have no awareness of time (indeed, by body’s internal clock works lest I should never wake up), therefore, I could sleep forever and not know it if it were possible. So it is with the spiritually dead — they are unaware that they are spiritually dead and were it not for the grace of God, they would never be aware of their spiritual deadness.
The ultimate point is that salvation/regeneration/the new birth etc. is all the work of God and not man. Soli Deo Gloria.