Amerigelicals II

Continuing: I am amplifying what I said concerning engraving on our children’s hearts. So I have noticed that something has been engraved onto my very being. The very core of who I am, it is the template and the canvas I now work with. We all do. It seems normal.

God didn’t engrave this junk onto me. We can call it something else besides engraving, but it describes so well the how positively it’s on me. We could call it using a Sharpie permanent marker on their heart but I think it misses the essence of what’s happening. This is how the word puts it…
Deu 6:5-8 And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.

The passage … shalt teach them diligently … is from the word shaman : to point ; intencely to pierce: figuratively to inculcate,prick sharp, (see previous email) teach diligently.

See also Deu 27:3 And thou shalt write upon them all the words of this law, when thou art passed over, that thou mayest go in unto the land which the…

I believe that God wants us as fathers to imitate Him, we are made in his image and he is our example as our heavenly father. We are called to understand what it is that He wants to write on our children’s hearts and we begin the process as it were. We put in the foundational understandings for all of life, his word, his law. We give them frontlets and we put in what God said to instill. This is Genesis, Deuteronomy ,Psalms, proverbs ,all of the word, to make disciples of all nations teaching whatsoever I have commanded you.

I think that it is through family life we learn the basics of making disciples, do it well enough and you have a basic qualification to be an elder. I shudder to think how many Pastors are not qualified. The fact that the whole church is hunky dory with the word pastor rather than elder speaks volumes. We do think of the world around us needing to be evangelized but what they really need is to be made disciples of.

We got saved people all over the place, no disciples,(yes exaggeration) most even opposing what God has said to do in his word. That’s by Jesus definition, you are either with me or against me. (I believe that we can be both with and against Jesus in thousands of different thought processes.

We are double minded, unstable in all our ways… hence the need to…. take every thought captive.) Most Pastors would fight Gods order for his church, IE a plurality of elders. They would no longer be in control. The church would no longer function like a small business. (I know first hand that in the denomination I came from that the supervisor for Arizona was discipling his new pastors to think of their church’s this way. As a small business. He discipled the current supervisor so I would bet this mindset is still there.)

Some of us are experiencing first hand the rebellion, the resistance to finding the lost book of the Law concerning picking civil magistrates. See mine and Robs comments this week. Its not that Christians don’t read their bibles, its that we have humanistic thought processes at the foundational levels of our comprehension. We force Gods word through that grid without even knowing we are doing it.

Swanson apparently has been taking his men through graduate level books for their mens meetings. They were doing Bahnsens “Always Ready” at the meeting I attended. In his “Kingdom of God” talk, that I linked to, he made mention that the men had just finished Schaffer’s “ how shall we then live” book. Meaty stuff. Most men wouldn’t jump into these books but doing as group it is easier. These guys had their 12 year old sons with them. I saw Kevin pressing in with a 16/17? year old on how come the principle of turning the other cheek doesn’t apply to the civil magistrate. We must remake the grid through which we see life, to conform it to Gods word.

We can think that if we just do more of the word, it will fix us. On some stuff , yes.

We are reading through “For Kirk and Covenant, the stalwart courage of John Knox “ as prep for the reformation day party. He poured over works of Jerome and Augustine to help get his understanding. We stand on the shoulders who have gone before. Amerigelicals stand on the shoulder's of the culture around us.