John Stott sums it up

For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. 

--- (John Stott)

 From Pr. Phil Ressler's Facebook post today

Truth - John Hus

I have chosen the way of truth;
   I have set my heart on your laws. -- Psalm 119:30

Seek the truth
Listen to the truth
Teach the truth
Love the truth
Abide by the truth
And defend the truth
Unto death.

John Hus, selected

Promises to Keep; Sept. 23; p. 305

He got it right!

The second order of business comes from the pen of Dr. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and frontline fighter of the culture wars. He quotes from a letter sent to Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax.
“I am a stay-at-home mother of four who has tried to raise my family under the same strong Christian values that I grew up with,” the woman writes. “Therefore I was shocked when my oldest daughter, ‘Emily,’ suddenly announced she had ‘given up believing in God’ and decided to ‘come out’ as an atheist.”
Did you catch it? I thought for sure Al would miss this one. I thought he would put up a fight for the “strong Christian values” that should permeate every home in America. But I was wrong. Al got it. He says,
Christian values are the problem. Hell will be filled with people who were avidly committed to Christian values. Christian values cannot save anyone and never will. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a Christian value, and a comfortability with Christian values can blind sinners to their need for the gospel.
Wow. That needs to be preached from every Baptist pulpit this Sunday. And Methodist. And Lutheran. And Catholic. Can we please drop “Christian values” and refocus on the good news that Jesus bore our sins and our shame?

-- Guest Author, Internet Monk, September 20^th post.

Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise

 Madeleine often makes me think and challenges my spiritual box.  This reading totally fit a conversation I had with a student today. --- drs

I seek for God that he may find me because I have learned, empirically, that this is how it works. I seek: he finds. The continual seeking is the expression of the hope for a creator great enough to care for every particular atom and sub-atom of his creation, from the greatest galaxy to the smallest farandolae. Because of my particular background I see the coming together of  macrocosm and microcosm in the Eucharist, and I call this Creator: God, Father; but no human being has ever called him by his real name, which is great and terrible and unknown, and not to be uttered by mortal man. If inadvertently my lips framed the mighty syllables, entire galaxies might explode.

As I read the Old and New Testaments I am struck by the awareness therein of our lives being connected with cosmic powers, angels and archangels, heavenly principalities and powers, and the groaning of creation. It's too radical, too uncontrolled for many of us, so we build churches which are the safest possible places in which to escape God. We pin him down, far more painfully than he was nailed to the cross, so that he is rational and comprehensible and like us, and even more unreal.

And that won't do. That will not get me through death and danger and pain, nor life and freedom and joy.

Glimpses of Grace Madeline L'Engle; Sept 21; pp. 246-7

Above the Horizon: Buechner

Another moment I have always remembered was walking out on deck one night after supper and finding a young red-haired officer peering into the dark through binoculars. He told me he was scanning the horizon for signs of other ships, and the way to do that, he explained, was to look not at the horizon but just above it. He said you could see better that way than by looking straight on, and I have found it to be an invaluable truth in many ways. Listen not just to the words being spoken but to the silences between the words, and watch not just the drama unfolding but the faces of all around you watching it unfold. Years later when preaching a sermon about Noah, it was less the great flood that I tried to describe than the calloused palm of Noah’s hand as he reached out to take the returning dove, less the resurrection itself than the moment, a day or so afterward, when Jesus stood on the beach cooking fish on a charcoal fire and called out to the disciples in their boat, “Come and have breakfast.”

- Frederick Buechner via the internetmonk.com