Renewed Minds has Moved!

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Tim Lane Handouts

Dr Lane will be lecturing from this handout.  Please print it out on your own if you can before you come so that the church can save on printing costs.  Thanks!

New How People Change 6-10 Compatibility Mode

A Little Taster from How People Change: The Average John

In case you needed a little stronger of a nudge to come this weekend, here’s a little excerpt from Dr Lane’s book, “How People Change.”  I think most of us are in a similar place with no major crisis calling us to deeper and deeper growth in discipleship.  Tim Lane hits the nail on the head here!

In John’s case, the problem was that he was simply too content.  He had reached a plateau in his relationship with God.  He had a strong faith and was involved in his church, but there were Thorns in his life that just weren’t going away.  For example, John had an explosive temper.  He regularly blew up in traffic and got mad at his wife when they worked together around the house.  He could barely control his anger at the officials at his children’s athletic events.

John also struggled with debt.  He always had his eye on the next new tool or ‘man-toy.’  He drove a late model luxury car and lived in a house he couldn’t afford.  despite several raises and a reasonable budget, John’s materialism had led him into debt.

John had problems in his relationship with his wife, Meg.  Rather than a relationship of servant love, tenderness, and unity, their marriage had the feel of military détente.  They didn’t fight a lot; they just lived separate lives and ended each day sleeping in the same bed.  Meg didn’t feel close to John, so she surrounded herself with friends with whom she shared her joys and sorrows.

There are many Johns in our churches–People who know the Lord but whose lives clearly need change.  Yet they live in the Christian community with no sense of urgency or evidence of a personal agenda for growth.  As Christians, they are far too easily satisfied.

God calls you to be dissatisfied.  You should be discontent, restless, and hungry!  The Christian life is a state of thankful discontent or joyful dissatisfaction.  That is, I live every day thankful for the grace that has changed my life, but I am not satisfied.  Why not?  Because, when I look at myself honestly, I have to admit that I am not all I can be in Christ.   I am thankful for the many things in my life that would not be there without his grace, but I will not settle for a partial inheritance!

Do you have a holy discontent?  Or has your spiritual life stagnated?  Either way, please come and be inspired to grow in the likeness of Christ!

Jesus on Divorce

Yesterday we read a large section from the Sermon on the Mount.  It was too large, in fact, to adequately comment on all of it.  Normally I take this in stride, but yesterday’s text makes that a bit harder.  Yesterday we read Jesus’ words on divorce from the Sermon on the Mount, namely, that anyone who divorces his wife makes her commit adultery and whoever marries a woman who has been divorced commits adultery.  I think this needs to be commented on for three reasons.

First, divorce causes a lot of pain and guilt for everyone involved.  I have heard David Gravelly (a local divorce lawyer) say that the best divorce is terrible, and it only gets worse from there.  Second, culturally we have tried to salve the pain caused by divorce by minimalizing it.  From no fault divorce laws to sitcoms that treat divorce like its just a small hiccup that you have to get over in order to move on with your life after your relationship has lost its passion, the cultural megaphone proclaims that divorce is no big deal.  In reality, divorce is not only a big deal morally, but it causes untold pain for everyone involved no matter how far gone the marriage was in the first place.  Finally, I know many many Christians who have been through divorces whether before they came to faith or after.  Reading these texts can make them feel like they are unforgivable.  More than that, if they have remarried or desire to remarry, they don’t know how to handle Jesus’ words without feeling eternally guilty.  To add on to these cultural grapplings with divorce, most Christian denominations have either handled divorce with kid gloves or boxing gloves.  They either affirm unconditionally anyone who has gone through the pain of divorce without confrontation for their own sinfulness, or they treat them as if they have, in fact, committed the unforgivable sin.  I want to try and walk between these to positions by confronting divorce with what I believe is the truth, but provide hope and comfort from the Gospel.  If, therefore, you are divorced and while reading this you find something hard to swallow, I would encourage you to finish reading the whole article.

It is my desire that we will begin to think more consciously about divorce, and I think the place to start is with Jesus Himself.  Like I said, yesterday we read Matthew 5:31-32, where He says, “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”  Now, in order to understand this text, we need to look at two things.  First, we need to look at the background of what Jesus is saying.  Second, we need to read everything Jesus has said about divorce.

So, what is the background of Jesus’ statement here on divorce?  Well, Jesus is entering into what was a cultural, moral, and religious debate in his day.  While divorce is mentioned in the Old Testament law, it is only dealt with casuistically.  In other words, the Law only deals with situations that arise from divorce, it doesn’t talk deal with the particulars of divorce itself.  It doesn’t answer the questions of what are permissible grounds for divorce, who gets the kids, etc..  So, Bible scholars were left to infer the answers to these questions from the scattered references to divorce.

C.S. Lewis: Patron Saint of Fuzzy Thinking

C.S. Lewis crushing beer cans with his mind.

Saint Anthony apparently lost his keys at one point in time.  He prayed and the Lord revealed to him where they were.  Saint Joseph had trouble selling their house in Nazareth until he stood on his head in his front yard and it sold automatically.  Today, if you lose your keys or can’t sell your house, there is a saint whom you can invoke to solve your dilemma.  Never mind that the powers these saints have incurred have little or nothing to do with their actual history!  In much the same fashion, one of my favorite saints (I’m using the term now in a Protestant sense) is often invoked quite inappropriately.  It’s ironic that one of the sharpest Christian minds of the 20th Century is so often evoked to justify fuzzy theological, biblical or moral thinking.  I’m speaking of C.S. Lewis.

When Lewis was 16 years old, he came under the tutelage of W.T. Kirkpatrick, or ‘The Great Knock’ as he was affectionately known.  Lewis tells of his first acquaintance with The Great Knock.  After a long train ride, Lewis commented that the countryside was not as rugged as he had expected it.  The Great Knock immediately began to question him on what he considered ‘rugged’ and what rational grounding he had for expecting the countryside to be more rugged here than elsewhere.  For three years, Lewis’ mind was shaped under this unflagging rationalist.  It is no surprise that the man’s mind was razor-sharp when it came to logical thinking.  Even still, I have heard Lewis quoted to justify lax thinking in terms of redemption, hell, the authority of the Scriptures, and any number of indispensable Christian doctrines!  I think Lewis himself would be aghast at how frequently his fans invoke his name to dismiss intense theological reasoning.

John Newton on Old Age

Be sure to read all the way to the end…

Pains, infirmities, loss of sleep, the failure of sight and hearing

(Letters of John Newton)

“Do not cast me away when I am old; do not forsake me when my strength is gone.” Psalm 71:9

I am drawing nearer and nearer to the season which the Psalmist either expected or felt. Many reasons teach the aged believer the need of this prayer. As his graces are still imperfect, so his powers are feelingly upon the decline. It was but little he could do at his best–and now less and less.

He feels other props and comforts dropping off apace. When he was young he had warm spirits and pleasing prospects; but now what a change of the friends in which he once delighted! In some he has found inconstancy–they have forsaken and forgotten him; and others have been successively taken away by death. They have fallen like the leaves in autumn–and now he stands almost a naked trunk. If any yet remain, he is expecting to lose them likewise–unless he is first taken from them.

Old age abates, and gradually destroys, the relish of such earthly comforts as might be otherwise enjoyed. Pains, infirmities, loss of sleep, the failure of sight and hearing, and all the senses–are harbingers, like Job’s messengers, arriving in close succession to tell him that death is upon his progress, and not far distant!

If youth has no security against death–then old age has no possibility of escaping the grim monster. But though friends fail, cisterns burst, gourds wither, strength declines, and death advances–if God does not forsake me–then all is well.

“Even to your old age and gray hairs–I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you!” Isaiah 46:4

So what if I listen to Amy Grant?

I only do it during the Holiday Season, and she has some good Christmas albums. Her Christmas Hymn is one of the better Christmas songs out there. Enjoy!

C. S. Lewis On Marriage, the Church, and the State

Maybe this is a bit too controversial, but I just read this in Lewis’ Mere Christianity and it has me thinking. Although Lewis is speaking here of divorce, could this apply to our public discourse about human sexuality? Part of the problem in our denomination is that Western European ideas have so infected the Church in the West that we can hardly tell the difference between what is Western from what is Christian. More than that, how much good does it do the cause of Christ for the Church to impose their views on society? If we are truly Christian, and not simply morally conservative, how much can we expect a world that doesn’t believe the Gospel to walk in accordance with it? Should our public discourse then be much more concerned with love of neighbor than simply gaining enough political power to impose our morality on others? This is a complicated question, and I’m not sure where I stand, I just thought I’d throw a grenade and get the conversation started…

Before leaving the question of divorce, I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question-now far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.

A Christian Nation

C.S. Lewis describes what he believes a truly Christian society would look like. It could be a good corrective given today’s polarized political environment.  Make sure you read to the end…

All the same, the New Testament, without going into details gives us a pretty clear hint of what a fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps it gives us more than we can take. It tells us that there are to be no passengers of parasites: if man does not work, he ought not to eat. Every one is to work with his own hands, and what is more, every one’s work is to produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to be no ‘swank’ or ‘side’, no putting on airs. To that extent a Christian society would be what we now call Leftist. On the other hand, it is always insisting on obedience-properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am afraid this is going to be very unpopular) from v to husbands. Thirdly, it is going to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues; and the New Testament hates what it calls ‘busybodies.’

If there were such a society in existence and you or I visited it, I think we should come away with a curious impression.  We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic and, in that sense, ‘advanced’, but that its family life and its code of manners were rather old fashioned-perhaps even ceremonious and aristocratic.  Each of us would like some bits of it, but I am afraid very few of us would like the whole thing.  That is just what one would expect if Christianity is the total plan for the human machine.  We have all departed from that total plan in different ways, and each of us wants to make out that his own modification of the original plan is the plan itself.  You will find this again and again about anything that is really Christian: every on is attracted by bits of it and wants to pick out those bits and leave the rest.  That is why we do not get much further: and that is why people who are fighting for quite opposite things can both say they are fighting for Christianity.