Keller Sermon Dostoyevsky Quote

Thursday 24 January 2008 at 9:42 pm There is a great Dostoyevsky quote that Keller uses from time to time in his sermons. He does in the third sermon on Job in the Jan 08 series along with a quote from Lewis' Great Divorce. Google books brought up the quote. It is found in the Brothers Karamazov. more...

Spiritual Formation on Planet Earth

Wednesday 23 January 2008 at 7:22 pm After I posted my quip this AM I thought of the fact that churches have often to a degree tried to manufacture an experience. The liturgical traditions are certainly all about it with smells and liturgies and costumes and pomp and solemn ceremony. Spiritual formation is a hot buzzword now of course. That is the new phrase for Spiritual Disciplines for those of you who remember the Richard Foster wave. Fasting, meditation, Spiritual directors, etc. Again, there is nothing wrong with any of this. Whether it you call it your “daily quiet time” or “devotions” or you just pray, read and think regularly with God it’s the daily bread of spiritual behavior for Christians throughout the centuries. These are important habits to develop and skills to learn. more...

Tim Keller Gospel Realizing

Monday 21 January 2008 at 9:40 pm

This MP3 is part of a three part series. It is part 1 called Gospel Realizing. Here is an outline of sorts I made from the MP3 lecture.

1. Sin:
 a. In the mid-late 20th century, D James Kennedy's "Evangelism Explosion" talked about sin we'd say "you have to be perfect to please God" but people would look at him "like a cow stares at a new gate". When he began to talk about sin in terms of idolatry he began to get traction.
 b. Before we use idolatry with others we first have to use it on ourselves. We have to be something before we can do something.

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Eating a bit of grain

Thursday 10 January 2008 at 9:59 pm As most of the nation was focused on the NH Primary, our Arnold was giving his "state of the state" address. CA, like many other states, is in financial trouble with this current slowdown/recession. CA is looking at a 14B shortfall. Arnold is being a weenie about it again. He's complaining about all of the automatic spending increases written into the budget so he wants to have an across the board budget reduction along with some group of constitutional amendments to create automatic reductions and savings schemes. Instead of actually dealing with THIS budget with proposals to actually deal with the structural deficit, we'll put stuff on the ballot to make the voters decide. The governor doesn't want to address it. The legislature doesn't want to address it much either, just kick the can further down the road. (Term limits work both ways.) Why is it again we have a legislature? The idea of across the board cuts are suppose to be "fair". I too see this as an abdication of their office. Cut what you can, set priorities, govern for Pete's sake! The one thing that is off the table: tax increases. Why? Republican dogma and in CA you need 2/3rds agreement to pass the budget or to raise taxes. So instead we simply borrow more money to throttle future budgets that are saddled with principle AND interest. Fear not, all will be termed out, it will be someone else's problem. more...