One wonders if Redeemer in Manhattan played a role in this shift?

An interesting omission: there is not one Acts 29 inclusion (i.e. nothing by Mark Driscoll, et al).

10 Signs Your Devices Are Hurting Your Relationships:

1. You can’t get through a meal without emailing, texting or talking on the phone.

2. You look at more than one screen at a time, checking email while watching television, for example.

3. You regularly email or text, other than for something urgent, while your partner or another family member is with you.

4. You sleep with your phone near you, and you check your email or texts while in bed.

5. You log onto your computer while in bed.

6. You have had an argument with a loved one about your use of technology.

7. You text or email while driving.

8. You no longer go outside for fun.

9. You never turn off your phone.

10. When you spend time with your family—a meal, a drive, hanging out—each person is looking at a different screen.



And why should you care? Isn’t this discussion relegated for academics or pastors? If you’re a Christian living in the United States (particularly in an urban area), as Dylan is fond of saying, “the time they are a changin.’  A failure to recognize these shifts will only thwart our ability to better understand our culture, hence thwart our ability to ably communicate the gospel into these ‘liquid’ times.

How do I know I don’t know him? In Knowing God (please pardon the redundancy) Packer asserts that “when people know God, losses and “crosses” cease to matter to them; what they have gained simply banishes these things from their minds” (p. 27). He then lists four effects that knowledge of God has on a person:

1. Those who know God have great energy for God;
2. Those who know God have great thoughts of God;
3. THose who know God show great boldness for God;
4. Those who know God have great contentment in God.

I confess I’m lacking in these effects. I’m spiritually lethargic, have rather little thoughts about him, am afraid to take biggish steps forward, and am restless. Mind you, I once had the effects Packer describes. But 2009-2010 have proven to be watershed years for me, with unexpected highs and lows that have shaken me to the core. I won’t get into all the sordid details except to say a fair bit of suffering was/is involved, resulting in equal amounts of humility. Prior to my world being rocked, I thought I knew God. But I admit that I often excercise on the gerbil wheel of replaying what happened, fixating on what I’ve lost, dwelling on my “crosses.”

Perhaps I’m not alone in my predicament? May God grant me grace to move from knowing about him to knowing him.

And yet as I examine my life, is it marked by “gaiety, goodness, and unfetteredness of spirit” (p. 25)? Sadly, no. Instead, I all too often “brood on might-have-beens; [I] think of the things [I] have missed” not of what I’ve gained (p. 25). But wait, there’s more: “…interest in theology, and knowledge about God, and the capacity to think clearly and talk well on Christian themes, is not at all the same thing as knowing him.” (p. 26). Ouch. That one hurts, Jimmy P. Yet he’s right: I need to face myself and deal with this present reality: I don’t know God.

So what does Packer assert are evidences of knowing God? More on that early next week.

Of course, if the Reformed mega-church is the only gospel preaching place in your area, you may have no choice but to attend there; but where possible, go to a church where the pastor and elders can really get to know you and you can roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty (sometimes literally).   That is simply closer to the NT model.

I strongly concur. Read Carl’s post here.

Over the last few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory….I’m not thinking the way I used to think….Now my concentration starts to drift after a page or two. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do.

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Sometime in 2007, a serpent of doubt slithered into my infoparadise….But my brain, I realized, wasn’t just drifting. It was hungry. It was demanding to be fed the way the Net fed it–and the more it was fed, the hungrier it became. Even when I was away from my computer, I yearned to check e-mail, click links, do some Googling. I wanted to be connected.

I missed my old brain.

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For doubt–full-grown–is not a lapse of memory, but a willful refusal to remember.

When a person’s doubt is well-developed, it needs a special confrontation, one designed to disturb complacency and strike a blow at self-sufficiency.

—Os Guinness, God in the Dark: The Assurance of Faith Beyond a Shadow of Doubt (pp. 45; 51-52)