Posts tagged incarnation
For His it was once more both to bring the corruptible to incorruption, and to maintain intact the just claim of the Father upon all. For being Word of the Father, and above all, He alone of natural fitness was both able to recreate everything, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be ambassador for all with the Father.
Advent: If your God is so great, why doesn’t he speak my language?
As I ponder the greatest event in human history and antipate the culmination of that historic event, i cant help but think about how through the Advent of Christ, He really does “speak our language!” Through the Incarnation, Christ became human, He became one of us. As we ponder that and the 2nd coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, let us remember that we are not only called to remember, but we are called to embody the Advent of our Lord for a world that is desperate to know that God speaks their language. Here is a piece from a former professor of mine on his blog www.timothytennent.com:
There is a famous story in missions circles about the origin of the Wycliffe Bible Translators. Cameron Townsend was a missionary in Latin America distributing Spanish Bibles when he met an indigenous Cakchiquel man in Guatemala who, using broken Spanish, asked him if he had a Bible in his language. When Cam Townsend said “No” the man famously replied, “If your God is so great, why doesn’t he speak my language?” This was the haunting question which led Townsend to found the Wycliffe Bible Translators which has now put the Bible into thousands of indigenous languages around the world. Townsend spent the next fifteen years learning that man’s language and translating the Bible into that language. The ten Christians who live in Kwamadebe are there to say to these beloved families, “yes” God loves you and he speaks your language! The Day of Pentecost was not just a sociological event, it was a theological statement by God himself that all the nations of the world “would declare the wonders of God in their own tongues” (Acts 2:11). John the Apostle envisioned the day when men and women from every tribe, tongue and language would gather in the Eschaton to worship the Lamb of God. Yes, heaven would not be heaven without the Alagwesa there! I, for one, can’t wait until harvest time!
A people who sat in darkness have seen a great light! May we be the city on a hill bolding shining that light.
Worship Planning
Today in chapel at Asbury Seminary, President Timothy Tennent said “every small act of ministry is the whole Gospel in seed form.” This statement echoed in my head and put one more piece in the puzzle of worship design and implementation. What i am coming up with is that every act in our worship has the capacity to carry the whole Gospel in its meaning. Let me explain:
I was part of a worship service last that week that i had high anticipation for, only to be sorely let down when i realized that at the service ending, we didn’t even worship. Now i am not buying into how many define worship ( the singing we do at the beginning of the service), but am looking at the service from start to finish. To begin with, the congregation was never called to worship. Why were we gathered as a people? Next, there was no congregational singing. We were never given the ability to unite as one people declaring the works of Christ for the glory of the Father. Finally, much to my dismay, there were no visual elements that let one know they were in a Christian worship space (not even a cross).
Now, contrast that with a worship service that follows the four part order of worship (call to worship, revelation, response, sending): every aspect of the service is prayerfully planned, and given the potential to point to God (both in word and visualization). In a service designed with all the small acts accounted for and thought of, every piece of the worship potentially points to the Triune God where the Father is reconciling the world to Himself through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. When the worship designer sees “every small act of ministry” as “the whole Gospel in seed form,” worship services have the ability to shape and form the congregation into the eschatological people of God who are being sent into the world as the very hands and feet of Jesus Christ. In worship, every small act can model the whole Gospel; as worship leaders, we have a great responsibility to plan with that in mind. I for one, desire to live and plan like I believe it.
For Christians cannot be distinguished from the rest of the human race by country or language or customs. They do not live in cities of their own; they do not use a peculiar form of speech; they do not follow an eccentric manner of life. This doctrine of theirs has not been discovered by the ingenuity or deep thought of inquisitive men, nor do they put forward a merely human teaching, as some people do. Yet, although they live in Greek and barbarian cities alike, as each man’s lot has been cast, and follow the customs of the country in clothing and food and other matters of daily living, at the same time they give proof of the remarkable and admittedly extraordinary constitution of their own commonwealth. They live in their own countries, but only as aliens. They have a share in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign land is their fatherland, and yet for them every fatherland is a foreign land. They marry, like everyone else, and they beget children, but they do not cast out their offspring. They share their board with each other, but not their marriage bed. It is true that they are “in the flesh,” but they do not live “according to the flesh.” They busy themselves on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven.
