What Christless Success Does to Us

ESPN.com on Walter Payton--

They called him Sweetness, but Chicago Bears great Walter Payton had a dark side, according to a biography to be released Oct. 4.

An excerpt of Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton by Jeff Pearlman will appear in the Oct. 3 issue of Sports Illustrated and describes the Hall of Famer as suicidal, abusing pain medication and dealing with a crumbling family situation.

Payton, who retired as the then-all-time leading rusher in NFL history after the 1987 season, was depressed and suicidal in the mid-1990s. Pearlman cites a letter to a friend in which Payton said he imagined himself killing those around him and then turning a gun on himself.

"Walter would call me all the time saying he was about to kill himself, he was tired," Payton's longtime agent Bud Holmes said, according to SI.com. "He was angry. Nobody loved him. He wanted to be dead."

HT: Steve McCoy

I Love This

The Overlooked Pastor

An outstanding word from our brother Zack Eswine.

Zack begins by reflecting on Paul's words, 'With him we are sending the brother who is famous among all the churches for his preaching of the gospel' (2 Cor 8:18).

Most of us who serve all of our lives in ministry will not be asked to speak at a conference or write a book or give a radio interview. For the majority of us, our ministries are a long obscurity among the local and unheard of. In a celebrity and consumer oriented church culture this fact can take its toll on a pastor. We wear down as the autograph lines always form outside another's door and never our own. It is no wonder that amid these cultural pressures even Jesus preachers can be tempted to use their ministries as a means to compete with and outshine others. The thought of an overlooked life knocks the wind out. Maybe this is why I come back to these sentences of Paul.

After all, when Apollos preached the place was packed. But when Paul came to preach people slept in. Seats were left vacant. It was hard to find enough volunteers for the nursery on the mornings Paul preached. The apostle was simply unimpressive. Closeness to God and measures of generational influence were tied to the towers of oratory, spectacular influence and gathered crowds. Why bear with Paul when you could go down the street as it were and hear Apollos?

The whole thing is worth unhurried, non-email-checking reflection.

Calvin Defines Faith

After explaining that biblical 'faith' is not less than doctrinal conviction yet must also include a settled reliance (fiducia), too, Calvin concludes--

Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

--John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.2.7

Sloth

Packer:

Among the seven deadly sins of medieval lore was sloth--a state of hard-bitten, joyless apathy of spirit. There is a lot of it around today in Christian circles; the symptoms are personal spiritual inertia combined with critical cynicism about the churches and supercilious resentment of other Christians' initiative and enterprise. Behind this morbid and deadening condition often lies the wounded pride of one who thought he knew all about the ways of God in providence and then was made to learn by bitter and bewildering experience that he didn't.

--J. I. Packer, Knowing God, 95-96

That last sentence sobers me.

Q & A with Jonathan Edwards

A few questions on the Christian life . . . I requested one- to two-word answers only.

Jon, what ignites the Christian life? How does it all get started?

JE: New birth.

Having begun, what then is the essence of the Christian life? What's the heart and soul of Christian living? What is most definitive of it?

JE: Love.

What is the fuel for the Christian life? How do we keep loving? What's the non-negotiable of all non-negotiables that will keep us going?

JE: Joy.

Where do I go to get this joy? How can I find it? What, concretely, sustains it, through all the ups and downs of life?

JE: The Bible.

But as I go to the Bible, what do I do with it as I read? How do I own it, make it mine, turn it into this joy-fueled love?

JE: Prayer.

What then is the overall flavor of the Christian life? How would you describe the aroma, the feel, of following Christ?

JE: Pilgrimage.

If joy, Bible, prayer, and all the rest go in, all under the flavor of pilgrimage, what comes out? What is the result of Christian life?

JE: Obedience.

Broadening out our scope, then, how do we make sense of the all this in a macro way? What is the context for the Christian life?

JE: Redemptive history.

What then, finally, does all this funnel into? What, above all else, is the hope of the Christian life?

JE: Heaven.

Called to the Pastorate?

The points--

1. Do you have a strong and recurring desire to pastor?

2. Do you have the required gifts?

3. Do others confirm it? (including: are you a life-giver or a life-taker?)

4. Does an opportunity present itself, as you pray and soak in the Word?

Soon

Were it not for my precious family, I would have no problem--none--with dying tomorrow and going to be with Him.

Matthew 16:18

Church website here.

Upside-Down Comfort

Lloyd-Jones--

If you feel that you are empty, if you feel you are nothing, if you feel you are poor and wretched and blind, if you hate your inclination to sin and have any suspicion of a feeling of self-loathing and hatred, you can take it from me that you have eternal life, for no one ever experiences such things until the life of God comes into his or her soul.

--Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Life in God: Studies in 1 John (Crossway 1995), 109; quoted in Tony Sargent, Gems from Martyn Lloyd-Jones: An Anthology of Quotations from 'the Doctor' (Paternoster 2007), 113