a marksman's perspective and a Christian's study
Major thanks to Winfred for recognizing my love for this book and directing his tumblr post towards myself. This is an intense remake for one of my all-time favorite books. I want to reread the book, perhaps a letter a night. Does anyone want to join me?
HT: Winfred Luong
Okay, every sermon I listened to this summer was beneficial in one sense or another. At the beginning of summer I heard a great message from John MacArthur on the ministry of Jesus titled “The Scandal of Grace“. There was another good message from Mark Dever titled “The Importance on the Local Church“. At my home church, our interim pastor, Joe Pursch, presented an encouraging series on what it means to not worry in anxious times.
However if I had to play favorites (which I obviously will for the sake of the concept of ‘Top 3′), I would pick a three-part series that Paul Washer gave at MCTS. Most people are familiar with Washer by his hard sayings and his blunt and borderline offensive statements. Surprisingly enough, these three sermons deal much more with teaching and exhortations to aspiring pastors and ministry workers.
I myself am currently not an aspiring seminary student but the teaching here was incredibly beneficial to my soul. These are messages that I will no doubt listen to again. Here they are with the appropriate download link.
If you choose to listen, my hope is that it will help you as much as it helped me. Tis’ good stuff.
P.S. This was also really encouraging to me.
As some of you well know, my family was blessed with the priviledge to adopt a girl from China this past summer. Although my time at home was relatively short, I was able to enjoy watching and spending time with her. On that note, I was also able to learn and reaffirm some important truths.
Number 1: Total Depravity is Real
What exactly is innocence? Some people would measure it by visible actions, others people would judge it by how young and cute a child appears. The definition of innocent can vary greatly among people, but one thing is clear. The Bible says that no one is innocent and that all men have fallen short of the perfect glory of God. Not only are we not innocent, but we are the advocates, supporters, and defenders of iniquity (Romans 1:32). We love sin. We are born into sin and have inherited a curse from Adam that cannot be broken apart from faith placed in grace displayed on the cross.
So what exactly does this have to do with my sister? Often times people would consider children, especially kids under two, to be in a state of innocence. At times it’s easy to see where people are coming from: toddlers take great joy in the simplest things, their smile and laugh are adorable, they do not know the troubles of the world or have experienced trials and tribulation. If you’re looking at kids through a worldly wisdom, this would make a lot of sense.
However whenever I see my sister angry or upset that she didn’t get her way, I’m always reminded of this example I heard from a sermon. Let’s say you were holding a baby and her eye catches a glimpse of the shiny watch on your wrist. Naturally she shows interest, and reaches for it. You notice her reaching for it and tell her, “No.” She continues to reach for your watch. Again you tell her, “No.” She’s beginning to get flustered and you can detect a whining pitch in her voice and reaches with more vigor – again you say, “No.” She begins to cry and nearly lunges out of your arms to grab the watch. You respond with a loud and authoritative, “NO!” and all of a sudden you have a hysterical baby on your hands (literally). The point of this example is this: if you gave that girl the strength and body of a NFL linebacker, she would have no problem thrashing you and ripping that watch off your wrist over your dead body. The self-serving man-centered mentality starts early. Very early.
Forget appearance, all kids are self-centered and worshippers of self, even my admittingly adorable and precious sister. I see it as a blessing that I was able to watch the example above played out in real life because all doctrine has great influence from the concept of the total depravity of man (if this is heretical, please let me know). There is none who does good, not even one except for Christ. When one goes to court against false accusations, a declaration of innocence from an earthly judge is rendered null in light of the eternal judge’s verdict. Kids are cute, sin is not.
Number 2: Of a Child-like Faith
On a more positive note, it was great to be able to witness what a child-like faith looks like. I realize that my sister’s child-like faith is not to a holy God, but the symbolism I saw was still important to me as I examine my own life.
My sister can’t do a lot by herself. She has trouble climbing stairs. She can’t go to the refrigerator and make herself a sandwich. There is a sense of an absolute dependence on her parents and brothers for survival. Her guardians literally give her what she needs to survive and she (in a sense) recognizes that. Katie is literally in a state of helplessness. When she cries out, she has faith that someone will answer and provide for her. This ain’t no prosperity Gospel, but it is true in a sense. God does provide for His children if they turn to Him in piety and faith.
Katie is also always under the watchful eye of someone. She’s always getting her hands on things and finding new ways to make common-place things into toys. It is necessary for whoever is watching her to reprove her if she does something wrong. She is to listen to that person because they know best and she is but a child. Is that not also true about our Father in heaven? Does not 1 Timothy 3:16-17 say that the Word of God equips the believer for every good work? He has spoken to us through His Word and laid out all His commandments so that we may obey for our own good and to His glory. He knows what is best for us. The idea of being under the watchful eye promotes ideals of authority and sovereignty which are reflective of parents and of God. It reminds me of the concept me of the latin phrase “coram deo“, which means to live as if to conduct yourself before the presence of God on an every-moment basis. The idea of coram deo provides strong insight into what it means to have child-like faith. We are always held accountable. We cannot escape the “penetrating glaze” of authority. We are to live in a manner that reflects the desire of our guardian and have faith that what they know holds greater weight than what we know.
It is so easy for us to tune God out when He says, “No.” My sister isn’t an angel by any means, often wandering off on her own and refusing to walk when told to walk. While there is a dire need for the intervention of someone greater, we often think we can do things on our own at our own pace. I know that is true of me. It’s easy to not “abhor what is evil” and to set worthless things before our eyes. One of many lessons learned from my sister is to listen to authority, namely God’s word.
I’ll probably talk about the grace of adoption in another post.
Number 3: Kids are a Full-Time Job
Before I left for Irvine, my mom said, “I’ll miss you because now I have to wake up Katie instead of letting her sleep while you make sure she’s doing okay.” Wow mom, way to show the love (just kidding).
In all honesty, I never had much respect for parents until this summer. I was a babysitter of three for my dad’s family friend for four hours a week in addition to watching my sister. I got to see a pretty broad range of growth: a two year old, five year old, ten year old, and a 12-year-old. There are difficulties raising kids of all ages. It wasn’t so much discouraging as it was, “What in the world am I going to do once I have kids?” While there is only one way to raise kids, the biblical way, there are many ways to go about it and the number of influences and stimulations kids are exposed to these days is mind-boggling. It really is something to prayerfully consider when the option is available to you.
Note to self: Don’t have passion babies. They seem like an unexpected huge load of unforeseen and poorly planned work.
Note to self 2: People at church are always looking for ways to get rid of old toys and clothes that their children used so you never have to buy anything.
happy days.
I know I’ve spent hours upon hours in Maplestory. I don’t really regret it and a comeback is still plausible although not probable, at least for a while.
I must say, I’ve been slightly impressed with the sort of attention LordUhai has gotten over the internet. At times it makes me disgustingly prideful and at others I look back and wonder why I invested so much time in the game. Needless to say, let’s crunch some video numbers.
Level 120 video
Time: 5:38
Views: 30,911
Total time I’ve passed in people’s lives: 174,131.96 minutes
Level 130 video
Time: 5:14
Views: 60,767
Total time I’ve passed in people’s lives: 318,013.96 minutes
Level 140 video
Time: 7:50
Views: 49,431
Total time I’ve passed in people’s lives: 387,209.5 minutes
Level 150 video
Time: 4:00
Views: 66,985
Total time I’ve passed in people’s lives: 267,940 minutes
Total time I’ve passed in people’s lives: 1,147,295.42 minutes
If my math is right, that is 796 days which is over two total years of straight video play.
By most measure, especially in terms of Maplestory and more specifically, marksmen, this is great. Bowmen were never a popular class and I hope to have helped build a better image for the one and only class that I have ever truly enjoyed playing in its entirety. I hope I made a positive impact on the community even though the game is about twenty times easier to play now than when I regularly logged hours. Thanks to you guys this blog has been a relative success, with over 10% of the 208k viewers coming to visit this blog. Hopefully you have been able to take away more than just information about marksmen, especially in the recent months.
Hm, I’ve been wondering what to do with this blog for a while so for now, I’m going to be going through my “top 3″ of random things, well, at least until I run out of things to think of.
Feel free to drop suggestions for the top 3~
I think it would have been easy for me to reflect on my freshman year of college and convince myself that I’ve been growing, that the spirit had been working. A few aspects of my walk certainly did, namely my non-existent disciplines came around and my respect for the Old Testament jumped exponentially. At the same time, I felt very stagnant, perhaps because of inability to serve in capacities that I’m familiar with, which showed me how dependent I can be on works. Tis a revolting thought indeed.
This Summer I’ve been blessed with many different learning opportunities and ample free time to indulge in all sorts of readings. If I could sum up what I learned this summer in one sentence, it would be this. I suck.
There are a lot of things I could be specific about: a low view of God, a lacking prayer life, few opportunities taken to share the Gospel – the list could go on and on.
However as seen by the title, I want to talk about scripture.
If there’s one thing that has greatly encouraged my conformity to Christ, it is my slow transformation to view the word with a more proper reverence. One of my readings that has most benefited me was the first section of Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology, which is entitled The Doctrine of the Word of God. It’s split up into eight sections, all which were enormously helpful which include:
Over the course of my reading, my countenance began to drop. I did not hold to any of these views. I had never seen the word as authoritative, clear, necessary and sufficient. At best the bible for me was useful, but that reduced its value to the same as any other Christian or moral philosophy book. I’ve realized that more of my so-called “theology” was based off the words of men rather than the words of God. I could tell people what John Piper would say, but I couldn’t tell people what God and his inerrant word would say.
I often think about the four characteristics that Grudem speaks of when I approach the bible. You may think it’s ironic that my love for the bible is not rooted in the bible but what I appreciate about Systematic Theology is that everything said is backed up by scripture. Reading the book is almost like reading paraphrased scripture … all the time. It’s so encouraging to me that all the doctrines so far (well, I’m only on page 720) are supported by scripture and not something that John Calvin or Paul Washer made up in order to tie concepts together.
The reason for this post is to highlight a sermon I heard recently that had a very powerful example that really struck me regarding the view in modern churches about the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture.
This sermon is titled “The Suffiency of Scripture in Ministry” by Paul Washer. For at least today, it is the top downloaded sermon on Sermon Audio. It is addressed to aspiring seminarians and pastors and is a very good sermon that pleads for people to have proper theology when they go into the ministry. Many of what Washer has been saying is driven home in the final minutes in a closing story.
I have cut the specific piece of the message and put it up on imeem for you to listen to. The clip is around four minutes long and much worth your while whether you are a pastor or a part of the congregation.
The reason why I think this clip is powerful because it testifies to our laziness to get in the word. Pastors are fantastic resources no doubt, but they are no substitute for the word of God. This goes for both real life pastors and the abundance of resources on the internet. It’s easy to, in a sense, “idolize” the pastor rather than the word of God simply because it is easier to have things handed to you on a silver platter. I would implore all pastors and people in ministry, such as teachers and small group leaders to adopt this truth. I will do my best to go to the Bible first. I hope you do too.
So often is verse 16 brought up without mention of verse 17.
16All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;
17so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
