Jojo Agot

More Than Just Emotions

The Christian religion is neither a set of intellectual convictions nor a bundle of emotional feelings. It is a compound of both, the intellectual giving birth to the emotional aspect.

This means that your emotional responses to the gospel should be properly guided by your correct understanding of the teachings of Christ. You can’t just go crying or shouting because you feel warm inside. That’s pure emotionalism.

If you ever get emotional, it should be because you first understood something liberating. People who scream too much and dance too much in their worship should make sure that their reason for doing so is based on a clear understanding of the gospel and not on the false hype the preacher or worship leader incited them to. Continue reading More Than Just Emotions

Bloodlines and Families

Matthew 4:18-20

18 While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. 19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

There is one unmistakable lesson we could gather from this passage: God calls us by families. When He thinks of us, He lumps us together with our family units.

We can see this from Genesis to Revelation. Everytime the name of Abraham is brought up, Isaac and Jacob’s names tag along. When Moses was commissioned to deliver Israel, his sister Miriam and brother Aaron were in the picture. Continue reading Bloodlines and Families

We Break Easily

One of the pervasive marks of our times is emotional fragility. I feel it as though it hung in the air we breathe. We are easily hurt. We pout and mope easily. We break easily. Our marriages break easily. Our faith breaks easily. Our happiness breaks easily. And our commitment to the church breaks easily. We are easily disheartened, and it seems we have little capacity for surviving and thriving in the face of criticism and opposition…

When you are surrounded by a society of emotionally fragile quitters, and when you see a good bit of this ethos in yourself, you need to spend time with people–whether dead of alive–whose lives prove there is another way to live. Scripture says, “Be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises” ( Hebrews 6:12 ).

John Piper on Brothers, We Must Not Mind a Little Suffering, a biographical sketch on Charles Simeon

Worship Wars

Kevin DeYoung on church music:

The worship wars could have been mitigated greatly if younger generations wanting newer songs had taken the time to remember memory. Church leaders may say, “It’s about reaching young people.” Or, “We need music that resonates with the culture.” These may even be good reasons to change some things. But we have to realize that those who grew up with hymns don’t just lose the songs they prefer, they lose continuity with their past. They lose a whole lifetime worth of experiences–happy times, sad times, birth, marriage, death–a thousand bits of life that get embedded in the songs we’ve always sung.

None of this means we can’t sing new songs. Praise God that we can have new songs to be filled with new memories for a new generation. But we have to do more than honor the past. We have to sympathize with those who lose their connections to the past, in church of all places. More than that, we have to remember the past and make an effort to preserve what is best from it. We forget at our own peril. For the Church’s memories should be our memories. And our memories are not just our own, but belong to those who come after us. We must not hide them from our children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders he has done (Ps. 78:4).

Susmaryosep!

[Matt. 1: 18-25- Meditations on the lives of Joseph and Mary and the Birth of the Lord Jesus.]

Mary was a virgin. She didn’t kow she was going to be THE virgin that was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah. She had no idea that her life was going to be a fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. No idea that through all her single life of probably waiting and praying for the right husband, God was unfolding a story far greater than her prayers. Blessed are you among women… That salutation is an understatement.

Her virginity. If Jesus were to be born in America or the Philippines today, God would probably have a hard time looking for a godly virgin woman that had the character of Mary. Her humble submission to the divine plan even if ruined her social life spoke volumes about her spiritual tenacity and faith. How often can you find virgins today who are more concerned about the will of God than in being hot? Continue reading Susmaryosep!

Admitting our Spiritual Destitution

Oswald Chambers on spiritual destitution:

We have to realize that we cannot earn or win anything from God; we must either receive it as a gift or do without it. The greatest blessing spiritually is the knowledge that we are destitute; until we get there Our Lord is powerless. He can do nothing for us if we think we are sufficient of ourselves, we have to enter into His Kingdom through the door of destitution. As long as we are rich, possessed of anything in the way of pride or independence, God cannot do anything for us. It is only when we get hungry spiritually that we receive the Holy Spirit.