Keeping The Heart 2

John Flavel (1627-1691) was a great puritan preacher who, along with more than 2000 other ministers, was turned out of his pulpit in The Great Ejection of 1662. He famously wrote, Keeping The Heart which is a mastery exposition of Prov 4.23.

'Keep and guard you heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flow the springs of life' (Amp).

Like all the Puritan writers his work is dense and doesn't lend itself to easy summarisation. However he opens his short book which can be found here on the internet with these words:

The heart of man is his worst part before it is regenerated, and the best afterward; it is the seat of principles, and the fountain of actions. The eye of God is, and the eye of the Christian ought to be principally fixed upon it.
 

The greatest difficulty in conversion, is to win the heart to God; and the greatest difficulty after conversion, is to keep the heart with God. Here lies the very force and stress of religion; here is that which makes the way to life a narrow way, and the gate of heaven a strait gate.

Keeping The Heart

Proverbs 4.23 is a key text for reminding us about the centrality of our spiritual hearts. The spiritual heart can be understood as the 'inner person'.

Proverbs says, 'Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it flows the issues of life'. Although variously translated the importance of the heart remains clear in all of them.

In one of Jesus' sayings, he taught that a person is not defiled by what he eats.

What is defiling is what comes out of his mouth from his heart (Mark 7.20). Such things as, 'evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness' and 'All these evil things come from within, and defile the man' (vv21-23).

A New Church

I am an evangelical looking for an Anglican congregation which still values the Prayer Book (PB).

Australian Anglicans have three major prayer books dated: 1662 (Book of Common Prayer), 1978 and 1995 but it's hard to find evangelical congregations which use the PB. Some will use tiny bits out of the PB but it's hard to describe their liturgy as dependent on the Anglican Tradition; what is presented could equally be found in any non-conformist denomination.

Usually members of such churches will boast about this absence of Anglican liturgy as if this is a good thing. (I suppose it can be if the formal liturgy has become lifeless and routinised but this process can happen within non-conformity too.)

Last Sunday I finally found an evangelical Anglican church where good expository preaching was given and the PB liturgy was used. My, it was good! I had almost given up hope.

The church is the Church of St Edward the Confessor in Blackburn South, Melbourne, Australia.

I'm not saying that other Anglican services don't have a place in the Anglican fold. I'm sure they do and that many join these churches from other denominations because the Anglican character is often non-existent.

But I wonder then why be Anglican at all. Why not just be non-denominational?

Mother Nature Unleashed???

It's more likely today that newsreaders will intone the sad news that 'mother nature unleashed her power' again in the latest tornado or cyclone or earthquake.

This language fits exactly with living in a post-Christian society of course but perhaps even some Christians are chary of suggesting that an earthquake is a God's demonstration of his power.

And yet the Old Testament is full of such witness (e.g., Ps 60.2; Isa 2.19, 21) and the New Testament too (Matt 28.2; Acts 16.26).

'Mother nature' which is creation, does not operate autonomously but is under the hand of God the creator. How could it be otherwise since creation is His creation?

But then what of the devastation that such acts of God bring about? Deaths, injuries, damage to property, dislocation of populations! No small consequences!

Whatever we come to conclude about the problem of evil we have to reckon with Jesus' words in Luke (13.1-5) who commented that those caught up in two contemporary sufferings that they were not worse sinners than others not so affected.

Jesus did not address the issue of evil but rather challenged his hearers, 'unless you repent you will likewise perish' (v5). These happenings are salutary warnings about our transient state as creatures.

I don't necessarily accept all of John Piper's theology but he writes some good things on this Lukan passage above.

Hindu Woman from a Brahmin Family finds Salvation

This video is an inspiration and shows the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ over the powers of spiritual darkness.

The Trinity a Forgotten Teaching Among Worship Song Writers?

When I hear some recent church songs I wonder whether Christianity has become a Jesus-only movement!

Some songs talk about nothing else but Jesus. Of course we all love Jesus but the calling of the Son is to lead us to the Father.

I appreciate that the Trinity is heavy-duty teaching in so many ways because heretics stand ready to demote the Son to a mere creature and the Moslems want to relegate him to an inferior prophet to Mohammed. And Judaism sees him in even lower terms.

And Christians too claim not to understand it! Yet the teaching makes the Christian religion distinctive among all religions!

But we are Christians, followers of Jesus because he is God's son who reveals the Father through the power of the Spirit.

What we do in our songs/hymns we are likely to do in our prayers. So some will pray to the Son directly and never mention the Father. That's not the practice of the biblical writers who consistently pray to the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit (e.g., Eph 1.16-20). Even the Lord Jesus in the Lord's Prayer teaches us to pray to the Father.

Why then do we find this poor hymnology that fails to get the persons of the Godhead in their rightful places?