Author: Jojo Agot

Pastor at Victory. Faculty and adviser at Every Nation Leadership Institute (ENLI). MA in Theology and Mission at Every Nation Seminary.

What Platinum Credit Cards Can’t Buy

In the gospel we have full, free, open access to God. This isn’t “come once a year, kill a lamb, and hope you don’t die” access to God. We don’t need to whip ourselves into a twirling religious frenzy or to light sticks of incense. There’s no need to walk ten miles with broken glass in our shoes or wash ourselves clean in a sacred river. We can come into the presence of God at all times and at all places.

This is the greatest benefit of the gospel. Forgiveness of sins, a new heart, and eternal life are only a means to this magnificent end. Jesus Christ ushers us into the presence of God, and it’s in the presence of God that we find our soul’s deepest satisfaction. Psalm 16:11 says, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

A speedboat, job promotion, or beautiful, loving spouse who likes long walks on the beach can’t bring fullness of joy. Eternal pleasures can’t be purchased with a platinum credit card. Full, overflowing, eternal joy and pleasure are found only in the presence of God, and in the gospel we have access to his joyful presence….

If we’re not consistently spending time in the presence of God, we won’t be content.

Period.

Source: Stephen Altrogge, The Greener Grass Conspiracy: Finding Contentment on Your Side of the Fence (Good News Publishers/Crossway Books, 2011)

What I Learned from StarGate Movie

I’m a sucker for magical and sci-fi movies and TV shows. If a show involves anything remotely related to supernatural powers, flying, magic, time travel, and legends, I’d watch it. So I watched the movie StarGate, the prelude to one of the longest running TV shows in America, StarGate S-1.

I’m also a sucker of good theology. I often kid myself that when I grow up, I would like to be a combination of John Piper, Jonathan Edwards, RC Sproul and D. A. Carson. If I could manage to get a bit of Philip Yancey and Charles Swindoll on the side, that would be really, really awesome.

If you think there’s a huge disconnect about me liking magical fantasies and sound theology, relax. C. S. Lewis did it. I’m not alone. Now back to StarGate.

The StarGate movie had a simple plot. Egyptian civilization was started by the sun god Ra using his advanced technology. He came to earth via a device called StarGate, a portal that could take you to other galaxies. Ra took some ancient Egyptians to another planet to work as his slaves, but in order to avoid the mistake he did with Egyptians from Earth, he outlawed reading and writing there. The people spoke Ancient Egyptian dialect but they can’t read and write simple glyphs.

Ignorance kept the people on the yoke of slavery. Illiteracy bound them for generations. Not knowing and “not caring about knowing” subjected them to hard labor, fear and superstition, until the reading of ancient, worn out glyphs paved the way for their freedom. Egyptologist Daniel Jackson broke their chains with simple knowledge.

The spiritual parallel is unmistakable here. But unlike them, we suffer from information overload to the point that we consciously avoid necessary information. When you begin to speak or write something sensible, people’s automatic response is: “That’s deep! You’re weird.”

Critical thinking is never deep. It should be as normal as breathing. Careful analysis is never weird. It should be natural to anyone who is sane. Herd mentality and gullibility, that’s what’s weird. Following fads without asking WHY, that’s deep, as in deeply disturbing.

Ours is a culture of ignorance by choice. And if our society and culture go down the drain, we have nothing to blame but our self imposed ignorance and refusal to read and write sensibly.

The Culture of the Inner Man

EVERY workman knows the necessity of keeping his tools in a good state of repair, for “if the iron be blunt, and he does not whet the edge, then he must put more strength to it.” If the workman lose the edge from his [axe], he knows that there will be a greater stress upon his energies, or his work will be badly done.

Michael Angelo, the elect of the fine arts, understood so well the importance of his tools, that he always made his own brushes with his own hands, and in this he gives us an illustration of the God of grace, who with special care fashions for himself all true ministers.

We are, in a certain sense, our own tools, and therefore must keep ourselves in order. If I want to preach the gospel, I can only use my own voice; therefore I must train my vocal powers. I can only think with my own brains, and feel with my own heart, and therefore I must educate my intellectual and emotional faculties.

I can only weep and agonize for souls in my own renewed nature, therefore must I watchfully maintain the tenderness which was in Christ Jesus. It will be in vain for me to stock my library, or organize societies, or project schemes, if I neglect the culture of myself; for books, and agencies, and systems, are only remotely the instruments of my holy calling; my own spirit, soul, and body, are my nearest machinery for sacred service; my spiritual faculties, and my inner life, are my battle ax and weapons of war.

M’Cheyne, writing to a ministerial friend, who was traveling with a view to perfecting himself in the German tongue, used language identical with our own: — “I know you will apply hard to German, but do not forget the culture of the inner man — I mean of the heart. How diligently the cavalry officer keeps his saber clean and sharp; every stain he rubs off with the greatest care. Remember you are God’s sword, his instrument — I trust, a chosen vessel unto him to bear his name. In great measure, according to the purity and perfection of the instrument, will be the success. It is not great talents God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.”

Excerpted from Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students (Zondervan, May 2010).