Please comment with your findings, questions etc!

Spurgeon (1834-1892) is known as the Prince of Preachers because in his lifetime he published over 1900 sermons. He started preaching at age 16 – the year he was converted – and went on to become a hugely popular preacher-evangelist, often preaching to hundreds and thousands at one time (with no amplification!).

Here’s what he had to say about youth and maturity and the Christian life.

If you wish to be “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” begin soon. [...] Youthful piety has the most profitable opportunity of becoming eminent piety.  If you begin soon to walk with Christ, you will improve your pace, and the habit will grow upon you.  He who is only made a Christian in the last few years of his life will scarcely reach to the first and highest degree, for lack of time, and from the hampering influence of old habits; but you who begin soon are planted in good soil, with a sunny aspect, and should come to maturity.

from ‘The disciple whom Jesus loved’, Jan 4, At the Master’s Feet, selections from the best of Charles Spurgeon, compiled by Audie G Lewis

What a colourful and appealing way to make a wonderful point!

Stewardship

As an introduction to the article, Alcorn says: “The following guidelines are designed to help you exercise self-control in spending, become a better steward of God’s resources, and free funds to use for Kingdom purposes”:

1. Examine every purchase in light of its ministry potential. We must weigh the value of every item we buy against what the same money could have done if used another way—for instance, to feed the hungry or to evangelize the lost. I don’t say this to induce a guilt trip but to indicate the obvious—whenever money is used one way, it prevents it from being used another. For instance, I cannot justify spending thousands of dollars on jewelry when that same money could keep people alive or reach them with the gospel. I’m not saying it’s wrong for anyone else to have nice jewelry. I’m saying that jewelry, like everything else, must be subjected to the scrutiny of conscience, the Holy Spirit, and God’s Word. None of us should impose our personal standards on others, nor on the standards of God. We should ask God to direct us when it comes to handling His money.

2. Pray before you spend. When something’s a legitimate need, God will provide. How often do we take matters into our own hands and spend impulsively before asking God to furnish it for us? Several years ago my friend wanted a good exercise bicycle. He even picked out the exact model, a Tunturi with a retail price of $350. But instead of going out to buy it, he told me he was praying that God would provide him with that exact bike. By not spending the money, he would have more to give. A few days later, I was in a thrift store and was stunned to see a Tunturi bicycle, the exact model my friend wanted. It looked like it had never been used. I called my friend and he got the exact bicycle he had asked for, paying $25 instead of $350.

Often we either buy what we want or forgo what we want when there’s a third alternative: asking God to provide it for us. If He doesn’t provide it, fine—He knows best. But why don’t we just give Him a chance?

Waiting eliminates most impulsive buying. Many things that are attractive today hold no interest two months later. Look at garage sales and you get the picture. Setting a waiting period gives God the opportunity to provide what we want, to provide something better, or to show us that we don’t need it and how to use the money differently.

3. Realize that nothing is a good deal if you can’t afford it. Paying $190,000 for a house that is worth $220,000 sounds like an excellent deal. Paying $80 for a pair of barely used skis that cost $400 new seems like a great deal. But if we can’t afford them, it simply doesn’t matter. It’s always a bad choice to spend money on a “good deal” we can’t afford.

4. Recognize that God isn’t behind every good deal. Suppose we can afford it. Does that mean we should buy it? Self-control often means turning down good deals on things we really want because God may have better plans for His money.

5. Understand the difference between spending money and saving it. Saving is setting aside money for a future purpose; it stays in our wallet or in the bank. It can be used for other purposes, including our needs or the needs of others. Money that’s spent leaves our hands and is no longer at our disposal. If we buy an $80 sweater on sale for $30, we’ve spent $30. If we think we’ve just saved $50, we simply don’t understand the concept of saving. If we keep “saving” like that, we’ll soon be broke!

6. Look at the long-term cost, not just the short-term expense. If we buy a nice stereo, we’ll also end up buying a lot of CDs. If something breaks, we pay to get it repaired. If we buy a new car, we fret about dents and buy insurance to fix them. Count the cost in advance. Everything ends up being more expensive than it first appears.

7. Understand and resist the manipulative nature of advertising. People earn master’s degrees in persuading us to buy things we don’t need. Advertising enlarges our wants by telling us, “You need this car,” “You won’t be loved unless you wear these kinds of clothes,” and “You won’t have fun unless you use this product.” Advertising is seductive and manipulative. It programs us. We must consciously reject its claims and counter them with God’s Word, which tells us what we really do and don’t need. We should withdraw ourselves from advertising that fosters greed or discontent. That may mean less television, less flipping through sales catalogs and newspaper ads, and less aimless wandering through shopping malls.

8. Learn to walk away from things you want but don’t need. Once I received a large, unexpected check. After giving a portion to the Lord, I still had $2,000 left. Before long, I was out looking at something I’d wanted but had never been able to justify. The price tag read $1,995. But in my heart there wasn’t peace when I considered what that money could do for God’s Kingdom. Finally, I decided I shouldn’t make the purchase. When I turned and walked away, something unexpected happened. I was suddenly filled with a deep sense of relief and joy. To be free of it was the first blessing; to know the eternal difference that amount would make was the second blessing.

9. Realize that little things add up. One dollar here and ten dollars over there; a hamburger here and mocha there; movie rentals and rounds of golf. These things may seem inconsequential, but they can add up to hundreds of dollars per month and thousands per year that could be used for Kingdom purposes. If a swimming pool is full of leaks, you can pump in more water, but it will never be enough until the leaks are fixed. We can take in more income, but until we fix the little leaks in our spending habits, we’ll never be able to divert the flow of money for higher purposes.

10. Set up a budget and live by it. Imagine you entrust a large sum of money to a money manager, telling him to wisely invest it on your behalf. A few months later, you call him to see how the investments are doing. Embarrassed by your call, he admits, “There are no investments. None of your money is left.” Shocked you ask, “Where did it all go?” Sheepishly, your money manager responds, “Well, I can think of some expenses here and there, but for the most part I really can’t say. There was this and that, and next thing I knew, it was all gone.”

What would you think? How would you feel? How does God think and feel when at the end of the month nothing’s left from the money He entrusted to us, and we don’t even know where it went? If some of us ran a corporation and handled its money like we do God’s, we’d go to prison!

Two practical steps can greatly help us get a grip on our spending: recording expenditures and making a budget. These steps will help us detect problem areas by clarifying our spending habits. This will improve our mental and marital health because financial disorder is one of the leading causes of personal and familial stress.

Living on a budget will free up lots of money. When I was a pastor, I met with families who followed a budget and did fine on a very meager income. I met with others who made much more and were always in financial crisis.

Handling it is the Key

It’s not how much money we make, but how we handle it that matters. And it all begins by recognizing the money we’re handling is not our own. It belongs to another, before whom we will one day stand, and from whom the best words we could ever hear are these: “Well done my good and faithful servant. Enter into your Master’s joy.”

(by Randy Alcorn, Eternal Perspective Ministries, 39085 Pioneer Blvd., Suite 206, Sandy, OR 97055, 503-668-5200, www.epm.org, www.randyalcorn.blogspot.com)

We looked at this list again at our Community Group on Thursday night which was a really fruitful exercise, not to mention humbling, encouraging, and bonding as we basically confessed our sins to each other and prayed for each other. But of course we can’t stop there – we need to fight our sin by acknowledging it, hating it, confessing it to God, and ultimately repenting of (or turning completely away from) it, and turning towards the Christlike attitudes and actions that replace it. We’re reproducing Jerry Bridges’ list below to this end.

ungodliness

anxieties and frustrations

discontentment

unthankfulness

pride(fulness, revealed specifically in self-righteousness, even in a pursuit of theological accuracy, in prideful motives behind our achievements and revealed in a spirit of independence)

selfishness (with our interests, time, money and inconsiderateness)

lack of self-control (in eating, drinking and temperament, finances, entertainment and shopping)

impatience and irritability

anger (even anger towards God) and

the weeds of anger (underlying roots of anger in resentment, bitterness, enmity, hostility and holding grudges)

judgmentalism (and a critical spirit over differing convictions and doctrinal disagreements)

envy, jealousy, competitiveness and being controlling

sins of the tongue (like gossip, slander, lying, harsh words, sarcasm, insults and ridicule)

worldliness (shown financially, by our idolatry and in “vicarious immorality,” that is, the enjoyment of watching or reading the sinfulness of others)

As we tackle our ‘respectable sins’ and seek to expose them to the light, don’t forget this wonderful promise -

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9

They will say of me, ‘In the LORD alone are righteousness and strength.’ All who have raged against him will come to him and be put to shame. But in the LORD all the descendants of Israel will be found righteous and will exult.

You don’t need 3 guesses to work out which side you’d want to be on!

But actually I was going to ask what you’re reading, and say that if you ever want or need a recommendation, Steve and I love both reading and recommending books (including books of the Bible) to people. We’ve been so influenced and grown through reading over our journeys as Christians that we can’t help spreading the love. Plus we have several hundred books in our library available for borrowing, so let us know if you’d like a summer reading list. We’d be glad to get you started!

If you could put in a request for what you’d like to be taught about or interact with in a sermon or a seminar, what would you ask for?

Unfortunately we can’t make any promises, but it’d be great to have your input as we plan for next year…

On Sundays I have been trying to read a chapter of Piper’s book, Seeing and Savouring Jesus Christ.  I’ve been trying to do this because I realised from/after our big trip overseas in July-Aug this year that I was often arriving at church (or music practice) distracted or frazzled rather than eager to focus on the excellencies of the Lord Jesus so I could declare and respond to them whole-heartedly.  This was making church a struggle for me and making me less than edifying for others and not very glorifying to Jesus.  Bad news.

Church overseas (especially at and after the Worship God 09 conference) was a joy largely because instead of being distracted (holidays are good like that!) I was focused, and helped by the service leaders to focus, so I learned I have to actively prepare myself for church every week, even several hours beforehand.  Hence, SASJC.

In the introduction to this book, Piper says:

When I speak of seeing Jesus Christ, I don’t mean seeing with the eyes of your head, but the eyes of your heart. … When we see with our spiritual eyes, we see the truth and beauty and value of Jesus Christ for what they really are.  Thus a blind person today may see Christ more clearly than many who have eyes.

Everyone can read the stories of Jesus and “see” the portraits painted by the words of those who knew him.  But not everyone sees truth and beauty and infinite value.  Some see only myth.  Some see foolishness.  Some see offense.  ”Seeing they do not see.”  …

Savoring Jesus Christ is the response to this second [spiritual] kind of seeing.  When you see something as true and beautiful and valuable, you savor it.  That is, you treasure it.  You cherish and admire and prize it.  Spiritual seeing and spiritual savoring are so closely connected that it would be fair to say: If you don’t savor Christ, you haven’t seen Christ for who he is.  If you don’t prize him above all things, you haven’t apprehended his true worth.

The aim of this book is to help you see and savor Christ.

I just read chapter 4 about Jesus’ joy.  It was a 4.5 page meditation on how Jesus is joyful, rejoices, pursued joy, and gives us his joy.  This is fantastic and amazing because his joy is indestructible despite being concomitant with suffering (his and ours and others’).  We can think Jesus was just bland and stoic or worse, sad, so we can live our Christian lives like this too.  But just like Jesus, we can possess an indestructible joy in God as well as live sensitively and effectively in a broken world while waiting to live forever joyfully with him.

mmmm, I thought.  I’d like to grow in this joy.  How good to be able to pray Piper’s indefatigable prayers at the end of each chapter; an excerpt -

May Christ so dwell in our hearts with his indestructible joy that day by day we are conformed more and more to his glad image.  And so may we be a place of refuge and eternal refreshment for a hopeless, joy-seeking world of people who do not know they are starved for the glory of the gladness of God in Jesus Christ.  In his name we pray, amen.

Amen indeed.

Appetite whetted?  We have several of Piper’s books available for borrowing, or find them all online for free!

5:17ers, we hope you’ll make a point of coming to listen and learn, and also to help host this supremely important night.  We want to be thoughtful, loving, thinking, biblical Christians who respond well to the significant issues in contemporary society. This night will help.

And BC3ers, please join us – it will be a pleasure to host you!

There will be an opportunity to ask Simon questions on the night, but it would be easier for him and us if you could submit them beforehand – by email or by posting them (anonymously if you prefer) in the Comments section of this post.

Details again: 7.15pm | Saturday 14 November | 83 Ryans Rd, St Lucia.  RSVPs aren’t necessary but are welcome through the same means as above!