Air date May 22, 2016: This week Dan joined us to give his thoughts on how our last conference went.
men’s ministry
Latest News – 5/20/2016
We have a special announcement regarding our next Men’ Conference.
We will have former FSU football coach Bobby Bowden as one of our speakers.
The date will be October 22, 2016.
We will provide more information as it becomes available.
Also… I have not forgotten about the blog, but with the behind the scenes stuff with the last conference and the followups I have fallen a little behind. I will hopefully have more postings up in the next week or so, but I am more than likely abandoning the concept of using Desiring God for the postings; I will probably work verse by verse through books of the Bible like I am doing on Unfiltered Ministries.
Table Talk – Episode 46 – Why Church
May 13, 2016: This week at the prayer breakfast we talked about the importance of the local church.
Table Talk is a weekly gathering of men in the Pinellas Park area from different denominations and backgrounds. We meet every Friday morning from around 6:30-8:00 at the Egg Platter restaurant. It is located at 6767 US Highway 19 North in Pinellas Park. If you happen to be in the area feel free to come out and join us for a time of fellowship and Bible study.
Becoming God’s Man Radio Show Episode 24 – Conference Wrap Up
Air Date May 15, 2016: This week we had Jeff on to give us a participants view of our last conference.
To Pursue God – The Solution
So in this introduction to the concept of pursuing God and finding enjoyment in Him we have taken a look at the problem and how we try to separate the two concepts of enjoyment and religion. Then we took a look and saw how the seeking of happiness is ingrained into man’s nature, and to such an extent that we have this void that only God can fill regarding happiness. Then how our praise and worship are actually the outpouring of our happiness and enjoyment in God. Today I want to look further into introducing this concept of John Piper’s called Christian Hedonism and how it is essentially the way we live out what is says in the first section of the Westminster Catechism, “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”
What It’s Not
As we will be spending weeks looking into the concept of Christian Hedonism, or finding our happiness/enjoyment in God. I figured right now it would help to take a look some at what Piper points out that it is not. First as I mentioned last time the solution to the issue of finding our happiness in God is not looking to God as a means to grant us worldly pleasures. He is not the means to an end but He is the end of our search and pursuit. God is the source of our pleasure and happiness. We are also not putting ourselves above God by seeking Him. It also does not look at joy and happiness as justification for actions, but rather sees that when we seek after God joy and happiness are the results.
Basic Definition
While we will be going further into this topic over the next couple of weeks as I take us through insights I glean from Piper’s book Desiring God. I want to leave us this week with the basic definition that Piper presents in his introduction. It is a list of five convictions in which his philosophy of Christian Hedonism is built around. First is that the longing to be happy is a common experience among all humans that is essentially good and not sinful. Then we should not try to resist this longing, rather we should intensify the desire and nourish it with the deepest and most enduring satisfaction. Third is that it is in God that we find this satisfaction; not from God but in God. Fourth this happiness reaches it consummation when it is shared with others by expressing love for them. Finally when we try to abandon this pursuit of pleasure found in God, we fail to honor and glorify God or love people. In other words the pursuit of pleasure lies at the heart of worship and virtue. Summed up it is this, “The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.”
Table Talk – Episode 45 – Fear of the Lord
May 6, 2016: This week around the table we discussed what the fear of the Lord is as well as some fears that keep us from following the Lord.
Table Talk is a weekly gathering of men in the Pinellas Park area from different denominations and backgrounds. We meet every Friday morning from around 6:30-8:00 at the Egg Platter restaurant. It is located at 6767 US Highway 19 North in Pinellas Park. If you happen to be in the area feel free to come out and join us for a time of fellowship and Bible study.
Becoming God’s Man Radio Show Episode 23 – After Conference
Air Date May 8, 2016: This week we talked about the followup sessions we are holding after the conference we held the previous day.
To Pursue God – The Premise
Last time we started to look at the concept of pursuing God and its relation to our enjoyment and happiness by first looking at the problem we face of how we often try to separate enjoyment and happiness from our praise and worship of God; how we try to take the heart out of how we relate to God. This time we will start to look at how our happiness and enjoyment actually relate to our interactions with God. Remember we sort of started this off by looking at the first question in the Westminster Catechism where it states, “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Much of our premise for finding enjoyment by seeking after God comes from the introduction in Desiring God and more specifically from John Piper’s observations from Pascal, Lewis, and Edwards.
Search For Happiness
In his own search regarding how happiness/enjoyment relates to our Christian life Piper first encountered the philosophy of Blaise Pascal. It was in this philosophy that we can see that humanity seeks out happiness. Pascal goes so far as to state, “This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves (Pensees).” So all of our actions have the motivation of seeking out happiness and Pascal presents is without making any moral judgment, whether good or bad our actions are attempts to achieve happiness.
Too Easily Pleased
The next thing Piper points out is from C. S. Lewis’ “Weight of Glory” where in looking through the Bible we find many promises of reward and blessings. The problem however is as men we are too easily pleased. It is along the lines of a child content with mud pies while there is a buffet of innumerable delights waiting. What Piper found Lewis stating is that not only do we seek happiness, as Pascal pointed out, but that we ought to seek happiness, the only problem is the weakness in our desire.
God Shaped Hole
The third thing Piper brings up flows out of the second point. Pascal presented it best in his argument for a God shaped void in each of us. The argument stems from man’s longing for happiness and how we will make every attempt to fill this emptiness with everything around us. The problem is that it is an infinite void that only an infinite and immutable object can fill. You see the issue is not that we look to God to give us the things to make us happy, but that it is God Himself that will make us truly happy.
Where Praise and Worship Flow
The next idea that comes up then comes from C. S. Lewis’ Reflection on the Psalms; where in the chapter on praise it is seen that praise is the overflow of our happiness. In other words when we truly praise and worship God it is because of the happiness that we find in Him. Piper puts it this way, “God is not worshiped where He is not treasured and enjoyed.” We essentially worship and praise those things that we treasure and find happiness in, to not truly worship and praise God in this manner is stating that you find your joy and treasure somewhere else. This concept of a search for pleasure in our relationship with God is found all throughout the Psalms. Many of them talk about concepts as delighting in the Lord, longing for God, seeking after God, thirsting for God; all concepts that in corresponding verses or even the same verse show the pleasure such action brings.
Piper terms this quest for finding pleasure in God, Christian Hedonism. Essentially, unlike the concept of worldly hedonism, it is not so much looking at God as the means to obtain our happiness, the means to get stuff to make us happy. Christian Hedonism is more seeing God as the end of our pursuit, He is the source of our happiness not our stuff. We will look more into this concept next time and over the next few weeks as we dig further into the book Desiring God.
To Pursue God – The Problem
This week we are taking a shift from Back to the Basics to spend time focusing on this concept of pursuing God, or seeking His face. If you want this is a wrap up for Back to the Basics, as our conference was this last Saturday, and the beginning of my next series as I dig even deeper into this concept. The interest in this subject, though I have always been interested in it, was renewed with a Sunday School lesson I will be giving in a couple weeks on the topic of: Christians live to seek the Kingdom of God, that is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. This concept comes pretty much straight from the Westminster Catechism, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”
I have not been brought up in the reformed tradition, but I will mention some of my favorite theologians and preachers are from the reformed school of thought. That being said much of this concept and the following weeks will come from the John Piper book Desiring God. The main argument of his book is that as men we have a longing to be happy and that we find our greatest sense of happiness in God.
Modern Day Pharisees
Piper starts out his book by talking of his own experience, which is one many of us have probably faced. We try to isolate our Christian service from the sense of happiness and joy that performing such actions tend to create. We have the tendency to try to make anything religiously motivated into a duty that we have to endure rather than an opportunity that we can delight in done out of love for God. When you look at the time of Jesus this is pretty much how the religious leaders acted, they viewed the law as a duty they needed to follow rather than an expression of love for God. They took the heart out of worship and made it into a checklist that one needs to follow.
The Rocks Cry Out
When I read about this the first thing that came to mind was when Jesus was entering into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday stated that if the people praising Him didn’t then the rocks would cry out. In other words all of creation takes such enjoyment in God that if we don’t express our love and enjoyment in God through our praise and worship creation will. As modern day Christians some of us have fallen into the tendency as expressed by the ancient pharisees that our praise and worship need to be separated from our sense of enjoyment and happiness. Next time we will look further into how we are to fine our happiness and enjoyment in God.
Live Life Unfiltered – Sober Minded
This week we have been looking at the concept of living life unfiltered and have seen how it combines evangelism, discipleship, and accountability together. Then last time we saw how because of how exposure to the truth convicts us and shows one need for accountability to keep us from straying because of the convictions we face. Today we will finish up this concept by looking at 2 Timothy 4:5, “As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”
Sober-minded
Paul now personalizes his warning to Timothy by telling him to be sober-minded. What Paul is saying here is to remain faithful to the truth and not deviate from it. To be sober-minded is to be level-headed, vigilant, steadfast, and unwavering in your beliefs. The opposite of being sober to us would be the concept of being drunk, when you think of a drunk you see that their senses are dulled, and they are not in their best state of mind. It is when we are in this drunk state spiritually that we can be easily led astray. Again this is why accountability is so important. We have seen in past weeks how we need fellowship with other believers, accountability is just another aspect as we cannot be a Lone Ranger Christian; we are to help keep each other to be sober-minded to keep us from straying.
Endure Suffering
The next thing Paul tells Timothy is to endure suffering. We are never guaranteed an easy life once we become Christians, in fact we are told the opposite. You see we need to surround ourselves with those that will encourage and lift us up when we face suffering. That are willing to keep us faithful to Christ when we feel like we are ready to throw in the towel to avoid suffering. In turn we are then to be willing to do the same for them. It is much like when changing your diet or starting an exercise program. If you do it by yourself, eventually you will quit for some reason or another. However, if you have just one other person that is willing to encourage you and check on how you are doing you are more likely to continue on. The Christian life is much the same, things will come up that if you are by yourself you will eventually give up, but if you are in fellowship with others it makes it easier to bear.
Evangelism And Ministry
Paul finishes this out by telling Timothy to do the work of an evangelist and to fulfill his ministry. What this means is to first share the Gospel; Paul is basically restating what he said at the beginning “preach the word.” The second part of fulfilling your ministry is what I would like to focus on. As men one of our ministries is that of being the spiritual leader in our homes. We are to be leading and pointing our families to God. The way we do this is to again lead by example; we are to ourselves be drawing near to God, showing our families how they are to focus on God themselves. This is again why fellowship and accountability are important. We need others to help keep us focused on God in order to keep us from leading not only ourselves astray but to keep from leading our families astray as well. I said it earlier and I will say it again there are no Lone Ranger Christians.