Scripture Memorization Program

My good friend Joshua Krohse is developing a Bible memorization program that I've found to be extremely helpful. You'll need an internet connection to be able to use it, since it doesn't have the Scripture texts embedded due to copyright issues. (This also helps to make the size of the program much smaller.)

Give it a shot, and as you do, remember that this is a work in progress. A free one. Unless you choose to donate to the cause, which I'm sure I can arrange. In any event, you can download it here.

John Frame on God's purpose for creating the world

John Frame has an interesting post on what he calls "The Mystery of Creaturely Otherness". In it he discusses the foundational and baffling question of why God created the world. I recently wrote a much shorter, much less academic response to the same question. I appreciate Frame's willingness to consider possibilities, as well as his humility before Scripture in considering them. Plus he's about a bajillion times smarter than me.

What does God want?

God created us, and later saved us, because He wanted something He didn’t have.

If that statement just caused you to reach for your Bible and a red pen, I’m glad. Because understood in one sense, that statement reflects a dangerous heresy. But understood another sense, it reflects a clear biblical teaching. In order to understand what I really mean (and hopefully save you some red ink), we’ll need to turn our normal understanding of “want” on its head.

With God, “want” works exactly opposite of the way it works in us. When we want something, it is because of some lack or deficiency in ourselves that needs to be filled. God’s “want”, on the other hand, arises from the opposite of deficiency – that is, from abundance. He wants us not so we can fill His lack, but so He can fill ours. And as he does this, He brings glory to Himself as the massive abundance of His goodness overflows into our emptiness.

Jonathan Edwards made a similar statement (with greater eloquence) when he said that “it is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain, that it is inclined to over flow.”

This same idea is communicated in Ephesians 2:4-7:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Did you catch verse 7? It says that in the ages to come (that is, forever) God intends to put the inexhaustible supply of the riches of His grace on display. And how does He intend to do that? By showing kindness toward us in Christ Jesus! Can you imagine a more desirable way to be used for God’s glory than that?

If the prospect of spending eternity as a God-exalting kindness-recipient doesn’t make you happy, I’d encourage you to meditate further on this passage. If you belong to Christ, this is the future awaiting you. Give that thought a chance to grip you, and it will change your life.