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There's a two-fold special weight of March 9 for me and my wife: (1) it is her birthday; and, (2) it is the day when she said "yes" to courtship with me. The latter happened four years ago, when I handed over a book to her with a slip bearing my "poem of intent."

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Here is the first attempt of the youth fellowship of Binmaley United Methodist Church (which I pastor) to write a Christian parody. It is more than fine for neophytes.


What would I do without you in my life
You’re drawing nearer but I’m kicking you out
You pour out Your blessing, never ending, You don’t let me down
What's going on in my stubborn mind
I'm now giving up my life in Your hands
And I'm so guilty, Lord forgive me, this is my cry

My heart I surrender
And in you I trust
Your mercy and love is what I’ve found

'Cause all of me
Loves all of you
Love your Words and all your patience,
Servant-like Sovereign obedience
In Your majesty,
I'll give my all to you
You're the end and the beginning
I exalt Your Supreme Being
So I give you all of me
I worship Your De-i-ty, oh

How many times do I have to fail you
Even when I’m trying, I still hurt you
The world is pulling me down, You’re around to lift my hope
You're my Savior, You're my Lord
Lord of perfection, my Helper and Cord
I can't stop singing, I’m lifting this love song for you

My heart I surrender
And in you I trust
Your mercy and love is what I’ve found

'Cause all of me
Loves all of you
Love your Words and all your patience,
Servant-like Sovereign obedience
In Your majesty,
I'll give my all to you
You're the end and the beginning
I exalt Your Supreme Being
So I give you all of me
I worship Your De-i-ty, oh

Christ, I’m not able, Your grace fills my heart
Praising You with all I have

'Cause all of me
Loves all of you
Love your Words and all your patience,
Servant-like Sovereign obedience
In Your majesty,
I'll give my all to you
You're the end and the beginning
I exalt Your Supreme Being
So I give you all of me
I worship Your De-i-ty, oh


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First Corinthians 12:11 says, "All these [gifts] are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills" (ESV, insertion and emphasis mine). GOD the Holy Spirit sovereignly apportions gifts. It was in His sovereign rule why I often don't hit notes when I sing. It was in His sovereign rule why I have more fingers than the chords I can play without looking at a guitar chord chart. It was in His sovereign rule why I am unsure if I write a quarter rest correctly. I do not have the gift of music -- I do not do well with music. And GOD has prepared me for some other work.

However, as a pastor, I believe GOD has put in my heart a desire to guide the church into a congregational singing with GOD-centered, Christ-treasuring, Spirit-filled, Scripture-saturated songs. I have this longing to pen Biblically rich statements following music metrical indexes and use tunes of known hymns with such meters. May the grace of GOD enable me to do so. But for now, let us do a simple honing by trans-tuning the much admired modern day hymn In Christ Alone to a hymn-exposition of Psalm 23, He Leadeth Me. 



For the tune of He Leadeth Me...
 
But, of course, nothing beats the original arrangement...

The music sheet as how Getty and Townend wrote it is available for download and its free from Getty Music.

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Here's the first single off Shai Linne's new album, Lyrical Theology Part One.



The Hypostatic Union
By: Shai Linne

Chorus
I know it's deep but when you peep you'll find it's dense
Jesus both God and man, two 100%s
Fully divine, fully human
Introducing: The Hypostatic Union (repeat)

Verse 1
Our topic of discussion is beyond human comprehension
The infinite God has made a super condescension
The kind of entrance nobody could have anticipated
Precipitated by the evil we participated
In- through Adam and Eve our first kin
Cursed when they committed the first sin
Only if you have the Holy Spirit's antennas
Can you truly understand fallen man's dilemma
See, only a human can substitute for human lives
But only God can take the wrath of God and survive
See the humanly unsolvable obstacle?
With God all is plausible, nothing's impossible
True haters'll fight it but the story is certain
Two natures united in one glorious person
Jesus, the God-Man, official soul reaper
The hypostatic union- it gets no deeper

[Repeat Chorus]

Verse 2
The Son of God: 100% divinity
Self-existent second Person of the Trinity
Magisterial Imperial at the helm
Infinitely transcending this material realm
He's so original, getting to know Him is pivotal
Behold the invincible prototypical Holy Principal
Possessor of all divine attributes
The omnis, wisdom, grace, beauty, love, wrath and truth
He's the One that all creation was made through
And by Him, the earth's foundation was laid, too
Ask the angels, they saw it on pay-per-view
Created Satan too, matter of fact He created you
And nothing can escape Jesus' sovereign rule
From the farthest galaxy to the smallest molecule
So who deserves to gain fame?
By the word of His power the universe is maintained
In other words, put the cosmos back on the shelf
Without Christ, reality would collapse on itself
Jesus, the marvelous Author of all consciousness
Beyond what the sharpest biologist acknowledges
He needs no archeologists or smart apologists
He sees all hearts: Omnipresent Cardiologist
Master of Logic, Macrocosmic Novelist
Following any other god is just preposterous!

[Repeat Chorus]

Verse 3
The Son of Man 100% humanity
The mind stretches to understand how can it be?
You gotta see what He does
Becoming what He wasn't while never ceasing to be what He was
Is your mind flipping? That got you tripping? Me too
But the Scripture is true- peep Philippians 2
By faith we believe this amazing Jesus
Who made Uranus and Venus became a fetus
It's such a secret that few if anybody knew it
Months later, He's covered in amniotic fluid
The subject of the gospels, praise of Apostles
Armed with eye sockets, arm pits and nostrils?
Who is this Jesus? God clothed in human weakness
Super sweetness and peace for the true believers
See the One who never tires knocked out sleeping
See the Source of eternal joy weeping
Which one can explain how the Son abundant with fame
Who made thunder and rain now has hunger pains?
See the Creator of water become thirsty
On the cross when He saves from the slaughter the unworthy
My awe should be sky high and I ought to just cry, "Why?"
with water in my eyes when the Author of Life dies
Raised on the third, God man- soul seeker
The hypostatic union- it gets no deeper

[Repeat Chorus]


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Well, I love hymns. I love these God-glorifying, Christ-centered, Spirit-filled, Bible-saturated hymns. I love how they are packed with valuable doctrinal truths expressed in rhymes and poetry. I love how they are designed for congregational worship. I love how they transcend from generations to generations but remain fresh in their message.

And another admirable attribute of hymns is that they are written with a structured metric system. This means that a hymn can be sung even when the tune is unfamiliar as long as the hymn is of the same meter with a familiar tune.

When I was still unaware of this structure, I slightly deject when I browse a hymnal and glance at the great words of hymns like Richard Baxter's "Lord, It Belongs Not to My Care" or the Calvinist-appealing "I Sought the Lord" simply because I cannot sing them due to my ignorance of their tune. Such a grace from God that hymns have meters and that I was instructed of such metric system.

We can take as an example a grandly Theocentric hymn "Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise." Although I do not really know its original tune, the hymnal says it is of meter 11 11.11 11 which is the same meter for the Christmas hymn "Away in a Manger." We can therefore take the words of the former hymn and sing it to the tune of the latter one. And here it goes...


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THE WESTERN JURISDICTION HAS LESS THAN 3 PERCENT OF THE UMC MEMBERSHIP, YET IT HAS 17 PERCENT OF THE SEATS ON THE CT. 

BY WAY OF CONTRAST, AFRICA HAS 35 PERCENT OF THE UMC MEMBERSHIP, YET ONLY 6.4 PERCENT OF THE SEATS ON THE CT.

Three Simple Questions

1. How important is tithing to your spiritual life? And how important is speaking in tongues to your spiritual life?
2. How often do you hear a sermon on tithing? And how often do you hear a sermon on God's wrath? (Or if you are a preacher, how often do you preach on tithing? And how often do you preach on God's wrath?
3. How much do you affirmatively discuss tithing? And how much do you affirmatively discuss predestination and election?

With your answers on the questions above, I want you to check out the following graph.


The Graph Explained

1. Using a free Bible software, words were sought in the English Standard Version New Testament.
2. The graph above represents the number of occurences of some words that have something to do with one of three subjects: tithing, God's wrath, and predestination.
3. For TITHING, the words "tithe", "tithes", and "tithing" were used. These appeared in 7 verses in 4 chapters of 3 books. [1]
4. For SPEAKING IN TONGUES, the word "tongues" should occur in the context of spiritual gifts. It appeared in 17 verses in 7 chapters of 3 books. [2]
5. For GOD'S WRATH, the words "God" and "wrath" should occur together. These appeared in 19 verses in 15 chapters of 6 books. [3]
6. For PREDESTINATION / ELECTION, the words "predestined", "chosen", and "elect" were used. These appeared in 19 verses in 11 chapters of 9 books. [4]
7. Except for tithing, some appearances were not counted due to context inconsistencies. While on tithing, all appearances were counted regardless of context. [This implies that, except for tithing,  the figures should have been higher if context is not considered.]

Now, were your answers above consistent with the graph?

Three Radical Statements (At Least to Tithers)
Once, I opened my Sunday sermon with these three statements:

1. "Pastor Bernard, your pastor, does not believe in tithing."
2. "John Wesley, the founding father of your Methodism, also did not believe in tithing." Then I quoted Rev. Wesley in his Sermon 50: The Use of Money, "Do not stint yourself, like a Jew rather than a Christian, to this or that proportion. 'Render unto God,' not a tenth, not a third, not half, but all that is God's... (emphasis mine)"
3. "Your pastor (and your founder) does not believe in tithing not because 10% is too much but because 10% is too small." I then absurdly rephrase Mark 12:30, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and with 10% of your pocket." It does not fit, does it?

--------------------



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Albert Mohler writes, "Preachers need books as camels need water. The preacher knows the experience of needing a particular book at a particular time in order to prepare a message; other than friends and family, books are often the preacher's closest companions."

	The Juvenilization of American Christianity. Thomas E. Bergler (Eerdmans)
	In The Juvenilization of American Christianity Thomas Bergler traces the way in which, over seventy-five years, youth ministries have breathed new vitality into four major American church traditions -- African American, Evangelical, Mainline Protestant, and Roman Catholic. Bergler shows too how this "juvenilization" of churches has led to widespread spiritual immaturity, consumerism, and self-centeredness, popularizing a feel-good faith with neither intergenerational community nor theological literacy. Bergler's critique further offers constructive suggestions for taming juvenilization.
	Sojourners and Strangers: The Doctrine of the Church. Gregg R. Allison (Crossway)
	What is a church? This can be a difficult question to answer and Christians have offered a variety of perspectives. Gregg Allison thus explores and synthesizes all that Scripture affirms about the new covenant people of God, capturing a full picture of the biblical church. He covers the topics of the church's identity and characteristics; its growth through purity, unity, and discipline; its offices and leadership structures; its ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper; and its ministries. Here is a rich approach to ecclesiology consisting of sustained doctrinal reflection and wise, practical application.
	Reading the Gospels Wisely: A Narrative and Theological Introduction. Jonathan T. Pennington (Baker Academic)
	This textbook on how to read the Gospels well can stand on its own as a guide to reading this New Testament genre as Scripture. It is also ideally suited to serve as a supplemental text to more conventional textbooks that discuss each Gospel systematically. Most textbooks tend to introduce students to historical-critical concerns but may be less adequate for showing how the Gospel narratives, read as Scripture within the canonical framework of the entire New Testament and the whole Bible, yield material for theological reflection and moral edification.
	Christ-Centered Biblical Theology: Hermeneutical Foundations and Principles. Graeme Goldsworthy (InterVarsity Press)
	For fifty years Graeme Goldsworthy has been refining his understanding of biblical theology through his experiences as a student, pastor and teacher. In this valuable complement to his Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics, Goldsworthy defends and refines the rationale for his approach, drawing especially on the work of Australian biblical scholar Donald Robinson.
	Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD. Peter Brown (Princeton University Press)
	Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.
	Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. Charles Murray (Crown Forum)
	In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity.
	The Intolerance of Tolerance. D.A. Carson (Eerdmans)
	Carson examines how the definition of tolerance has changed. It now has less to do with recognizing the right of another to disagree with us, and more to do with not saying that others are wrong. It is impossible to deploy this new tolerance consistently, so that actual practice is often whimsical and arbitrary. Worse, the word "tolerance" has almost become an absolute good, and "intolerance" an absolute bad. Tolerance and intolerance have become merely rhetorical terms of approval and disapproval.
	Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics. Ross Douthat (Free Press)
	As the youngest-ever op-ed columnist for The New York Times, Ross Douthat has emerged as one of the most provocative and influential voices of his generation. In Bad Religion he offers a masterful and hard-hitting account of how American Christianity has gone off the rails - and why it threatens to take American society with it.
	God Is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology. Gerald Bray (Crossway)
	This volume is unique from others in that Bray traces the common theme of God's love through the Bible categorically--from God's love for himself and his creation to the cross as the ultimate expression of God's love, among other categories. The centrality of God's love in Bray's theology reflects a deep conviction that the Bible shows us God for who he really is. This volume will be of interest to Christians seeking to grow in their faith.
	Delighting in the Trinity: an Introduction to the Christian Faith. Michael Reeves (InterVarsity Press)
	In this lively book, we find an introduction to Christianity and the Christian life that is from start to finish rooted in our triune God - Father, Son and Spirit. Not only do we understand the person and work of Christ through the Trinity, but also prayer, the church and every aspect of our faith. With wit and clarity, Reeves draws from church history down to the present referencing a wide range of notable teachers and preachers. Here is a rich and enjoyable portrayal of the basic beliefs of Christianity that opens up the profound and life-changing truths of our faith.

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