The "Maine" Thing

Yesterday the state of Maine became the fifth state to legalize Gay marriage. This is an appropriate time to remind you of CBMW.

In 1987, a group of pastors and scholars assembled to address their concerns over the influence of feminism not only in our culture but also in evangelical churches. Because of the widespread compromise of biblical understanding of manhood and womanhood and its tragic effects on the home and the church, these men and women established The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

In opposition to the growing movement of feminist egalitarianism they articulated what is now known as the complementarian position which affirms that men and women are equal in the image of God, but maintain complementary differences in role and function. In the home, men lovingly are to lead their wives and family as women intelligently are to submit to the leadership of their husbands. In the church, while men and women share equally in the blessings of salvation, some governing and teaching roles are restricted to men.

An organization like CBMW is needed because the gender issue is so complex, and the consequences for violating God's Word in this area are so devastating. We hope that you will benefit from the critical ministry of CBMW as we help the church deal biblically with gender issues.

See the excellent CBMW website.

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Screwtape on the "Same Old Thing"
From C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart—an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship.

The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. . . . But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together on the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm.

But the greatest triumph of all is to elevate his horror of the Same Old Thing into a philosophy so that nonsense in the intellect may reinforce corruption in the will. . . . Of a proposed course of action He wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions; is it righteous? is it prudent? is it possible?

For the descriptive adjective 'unchanged' we have substituted the emotional adjective 'stagnant'. We have trained them to think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain—not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour.

Remember, the present is the only time in which any duty can be done or grace received. Don't be duped by super-spirituality. Embrace the "ordinary" and ask the Lord to provide daily bread.


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A Story of John the Apostle, by Eusebius (Church Historian, c. 263-c.339)


John had poured his life into the young man. The young man was a true, growing disciple. When John left town he committed him to the care of a certain bishop. Upon his return, the bishop informed John that the young man is now "dead." He is "dead to faith." He is longer one of us. John tore his clothes and wept. "Where is he," cried the apostle. "He's in the hills with the robbers," the bishop replied. John said, "give me your horse." John galloped off into the hills.

Eusebius writes:

But John, forgetting his age, pursued him with all his might, crying out, ‘Why, my son, do you flee from me, your own [spiritual] father, unarmed, aged? Fear not, there is still hope. I will give account to Christ for you. For you will I give up my life. Stand, believe; Christ has sent me.’

And he, when he heard, first stopped and looked down; then he threw away his arms, and then trembled and wept bitterly. And when the old man approached, he embraced him, making confession with lamentations as he was able, baptizing himself a second time with tears, and concealing only his right hand.

But John, pledging himself, and assuring him on oath that he would find forgiveness with the Saviour, besought him, fell upon his knees, kissed his right hand itself as if now purified by repentance, and led him back to the church. And making intercession for him with copious prayers, and struggling together with him in continual fastings, and subduing his mind by various utterances, he did not depart, as they say, until he had restored him to the church, furnishing a great example of true repentance and a great proof of regeneration, a trophy of a visible resurrection.

Let us not grow weary in well doing to our fellow church family members. Each one of us will, at some point, find ourselves on both sides of the chase.


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Quotations from the Sunday sermon

You are born of him. You are growing in Him. You will be like Him.

It is impossible for you to embrace truth, be obedient, love other people until you have this new spiritual DNA implanted in you by the Holy Spirit, until you have been adapted into the family of God, until sin begins to die in your life.

Remember, God sacrifices His natural Son for His adapted children.

I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except insofar as it is related to how He thinks of us. In the end that Face which is the delight or the terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised.

It is written that we shall 'stand before' Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God.

C.S. Lewis

In vain the fancy strives to paint
The moment after death;
The glories which surround the saint
When yielding up his breath.
This much—and this is all we know,
They are supremely blest;
Have done with sin, and care, and woe,
And with their Saviour rest.

Spurgeon


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