Last week, pastor Mark Driscoll spent a few minutes preaching on how Avatar is an advertisement for paganism. Here is the clip from his sermon.

A month ago, pastor John Piper very briefly mentioned that Avatar is boring in his sermon in this clip below.

The point that I’m wanting to make is the difference between Mark Driscoll and John Piper is that when it comes to sermons Mark Driscoll is a UFC fighter and John Piper is a ninja. When we look at how Avatar was discussed in these sermons I find Pastor John’s comment on Avatar more powerful than Pastor Mark’s rant. I love how Pastor John illustrates how Avatar does not even compare to the Bible, therefore there is no need to rant about how ridiculous of a movie it is we just need to make it known that AVATAR is BORING compared to the powerful Word of God!

What do you think??

Mark Driscoll interviews Dave Kraft, author of the new Re:Lit book, Leaders Who Last—which is now available!

I’ve recently applied to Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY as one of my other options for seminary. This video from Dr. Russell Moore touches on a lot of points as to why Southern ranks as one of my top choices for seminaries because of the fact the professors at this seminary explicitly share my beliefs concerning the providence of God, election, the glory of God, and Christian Hedonism.

This weekend I’m excited to be leading a breakout session for high school students on how God commands us to have complete satisfaction and joy in Him for the sake of His glory!  We must understand the implication of God being glorified by hearts that are on fire for him, and delight in him, and are satisfied in him, and take joy in him, and savor him then you must pursue joy in God.

However, if you pursue pleasure in doing a good deed or in worship, you contaminate it and turn it into reward seeking, which has now become the new movement amongst young people.  But if you buy what these emergent thinkers are considering, you can neither worship God nor love people as you ought. Or to put it positively, the very essence of worship and the essence of doing those goods deeds is because of your joy in God for His glory not yours.

Jesus’ aim in all he taught was the joy of his people.

• John 15:11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

Joy is what God fills us with when we trust in Christ.

• Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.

The kingdom of God is joy.

• Romans 14:17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Joy is the fruit of God’s Spirit within us.

• Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.

Joy is the aim of everything the apostles did and wrote.

• 2 Corinthians 1:24 Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy.

Becoming a Christian is finding a joy that makes you willing to forsake everything.

• Matthew 13:44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

Joy is nourished and sustained by the word of God in the Bible

• Psalm 19:8 the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.

Joy will overtake all sorrow for those who trust Christ.

• Psalm 126:5 Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!
• Psalm 30:5b Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

God himself is our joy.

• Psalm 43:4 Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy.
• Psalm 16:11 You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Joy in God outstrips all earthly joy.

• Psalm 4:7 You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.

If your joy is in God, no one can take your joy from you.

• John 16:22 You have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

God calls all nations and peoples to join in the joy he offers to all who believe. No racism. No ethnocentrism.

• Psalm 67:4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.
• Psalm 66:1 Shout for joy to God, all the earth.

The whole Christian message from beginning to end is good news of great joy.

• Luke 2:10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people.”
• Isaiah 51:11 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

When we meet Christ at his second coming we will enter into his indestructible joy.

• Matthew 25:23 His master said to him, “Well done, good and faithful servant. . . . Enter into the joy of your master.”

This Is like finding out there is no santa claus…

The difference between knowing about somebody and actually knowing somebody by having a relationship with them is a massive thing to grasp.

The vast majority of people can tell you everything you need to know about Jesus Christ. Word for word people can tell you who Jesus is and can portray themselves to be in a relationship with Jesus Christ based on what they know and say. However, the question isn’t about what you know about Jesus, but do you KNOW Jesus. There is a huge difference between knowing about Jesus and knowing Him. This is exactly what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 7:21-23.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

This is a scary verse! In verse 21, we see Jesus is saying that not everyone who calls him Lord will go to heaven. What Jesus is saying is that there will be some people on judgement day that see Jesus and who will say, “yes Jesus you are Lord”, but will not go to be with Him in heaven. Then Jesus goes on to say that “he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven”, which means that the people who go into heaven and enter the kingdom of God are not the people who call him Lord necessarily but they are the people whose lives reflect that Jesus is Lord.

In addition, this is what that doesn’t mean, that you earn your salvation by being good, because we know that salvation is a free gift of God by grace through faith on what Jesus did on the cross and by NOTHING we did. This doesn’t mean that we can say we are a believer and just continue sinning and be okay with continually falling short of the glory of God, because we are called to do the will of our Father. Therefore, finding pleasure in sin continually is not the will of our Father and when we do that its a complete and utter insult to the God of the universe.

1 John says that those that are born of God will not continue in sin. Here is an example, Jesus says in Matthew 7:14 that, “narrow is the road that leads to life, and very few people are going to find it.” Here is how I know that I am on the narrow road leading to life, because when I fall into temptation and I sin against God then immediately the Holy Spirit convicts me of this and I realize that this is not what I’m called to find pleasure in but rather full and ultimate joy in God. Jesus says in verse 13 of Matthew that “broad is the road that leads to the destruction and most people are on it!” The whole point that Jesus is making here in Matthew 7 and this narrow road illustration is that if you can just cruise off the narrow road and just sin and sin and sin while the conviction of the Holy Spirit never comes into your life then it might be that you don’t know Jesus.

In verse 22, “MANY will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord” did we not preach in your name and cast out demons and perform many miracles.” Therefore, we see that we have these people who are standing before Jesus on the last day and people start giving their reasons why they should go to heaven explaining I did all this stuff for you in your name you must let me in. This is why it is scary, because these are people who look like Christians, who talk like Christians, and act like Christians but Jesus will look at these people and say I don’t know who you are.

How does this happen??

If we examine Judas’ life we gain a better understanding. But first if you think about movies, books, or television shows, we see that its a common theme to have the evil or bad guy is usually wearing dark clothes, sketchy looking, and it is easy to point out who the good and bad guys are. However, in real life this is not the case and it wasn’t the case with Judas either.

Any time you see a portrait of Judas we see a snarl on his face and he looks evil or easy to point out amongst the other disciples. However, when you read the book of John, we see how Judas is really portrayed the night he betrays Jesus.

Jesus tells all of his disciples “one of you is going to betray me.” So all the disciples then pointed to Judas and said its going to be him because he wears all black and listens to metal music.

WRONG!!!!

After Jesus said, “one of you is going to betray me” all the disciples began examining themselves asking Jesus, “is it going to be me??” They had no clue who it was that Jesus was going to call “the son of satan.” No one had any idea who would betray Jesus!

There was a guy who lived with them for 3 years and they had absolutely no clue that he did not belong and was in fact evil. The Bible even tells us in Matthew that Judas casted out demons, Judas preached the gospel, Judas healed the sick, which meant on the outside he seemed totally Christian. The disciples had absolutely no clue! Jesus says there will be people on the last day that act like believers, sound like a believer, and talk like a believer who will be rejected by God. Jesus says he will declare to them that “I never knew you.”

The way this sinks in to me is when I happened to have dinner with some famous skateboarders one night in Athens, GA. It was Tony Hawk who sat next to me, Bam Margera on the other side, Ryan Sheckler, and Bob Burnquist across from me. No joke! I have played all their video games, watched their shows, bought the clothes, and knew everything about these guys and what they have done. However, when I was face to face with them and eating dinner with them, I realized that I had nothing to talk about with these guys because in reality I did not know them and they did not know me. I may have thought I knew them but there was no relationship. This is the same scenario with twitter and facebook. We act as if we know people through social media but when we are face to face with someone we realize that I really have no idea who you are.

There will come a day when we have to face the Lord of all creation. And in that moment it will be a joyous time of where you face the one you know through a personal relationship or it will be a time where you realize that you knew a lot about Jesus but actually never really knew Him. And my prayer is that we fall hard in love with God as our treasure and His word is our joy so that we may be in a relationship with Him to where Jesus calls you by name as His child and friend on that day we are face to face with our Creator.

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Here am I. Send me!

And I’m back…

As most of you know there was an accident with my site and my good friend accidentally deleted all of my content that I have blogged about over the years.  However, it is not a problem and the world keeps spinning.

Therefore, I have redesigned my site and it is now ready so that I can get back into my blogging routine.  I have a lot of great ides for future post and hopefully some podcast, but don’t hold me to that.  If your not already, you can subscribe to the site through google reader! Also, if you are using Internet Explorer the site may look a little weird because of the fact that IE can’t handle my site so for best results use firefox or chrome web browsers.

Most importantly I am looking forward to writing and sharing ridiculous things that the interweb has to offer.