Men, be sure to reserve June 11-12 for this year’s Men’s Retreat.

We will be studying Mark Driscoll’s new book, Sweetheart: Becoming the Man You Were Made To Be. You can expect to grow in three key areas:

1. Crying

A moving chapter on John 11:35 demonstrates that real men cry. Lots. He tells the tragic story of one pastor who was so hard-hearted he remained dry-eyed right the way through Sleepless in Seattle. He explains how in choosing Peter, himself a cry-baby (Matt 26:75), Jesus shows the type

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If you have received grace and it hasn’t changed your life, it wasn’t really grace.

Real grace makes a difference. It sets you free from everything you’ve always wanted to escape, but couldn’t. It sets you free to run to the home you’ve longed for all your life. It hands you a glass of cold water after hours in the scorching sun. It puts food before you for the first time in so long, you don’t remember the last time you ate. It welcomes you in out of the cold and wraps you in a warm blanket.

People who receive that kind of grace bury themselves in it. When the gates of the prison fly open, they run out. When home is …

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If you explain grace and you’re not afraid people will abuse it, you’re doing it wrong.

Look at Romans 6. Everything up to that point was such good news, even Paul felt the need to say, “now don’t go crazy, y’all.”

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s the dangerous, controversial, frightening truth of the gospel: if you are in Christ, you are free. You are untouchable. The verdict is in, and you’re innocent. Nothing you or anyone else can do can change that. You are adopted into God’s family and you stand in line for His eternal inheritance. Really.

If you are in Christ, what is “too good to be true” has come true.

As Jared Wilson said,

Yes,

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A look at wisdom Psalms including Psalm 37 and Psalm 49. MP3 download.

 

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The connections class takes a break from the Psalms series to further discuss aspects of a healthy church which were described last week in the Green Church Series. MP3 download.

 

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In yesterday’s Connections class, I mentioned a couple of sermons by D.A. Carson titled “On Being Prepared for Suffering and Evil.” I cannot recommend this teaching strongly enough; this isn’t the first time I’ve commended these messages, and it won’t be the last.

Here are the free download links:

On Being Prepared for Suffering and Evil: Part 1

On Being Prepared for Suffering and Evil: Part 2

In addition, Dr. Carson has published an extensive treatment on the subject in his book How Long, O Lord?: Reflections on Suffering and Evil. I’m only a few chapters in, but it is off to a fantastic start—I highly recommend it

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As we consider the serious side of Jesus’ humanity, this video from Mark Driscoll shows us a another side we probably think about too little:

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Some thoughts on pain and suffering and how our current teaching series on the humanity of Jesus helps me make sense of it all:

As a thoughtful Christian, I have to be able to make sense of that most difficult of questions: how do you reconcile the reality of suffering and evil with the existence of an all-good, all-powerful God? … As the atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell famously asked, “what are you going to say as you kneel next to a dying child?”

Bringing logic to bear on that situation is, for most people, simply a case study in using the wrong tool for the job. Instead, comfort comes from understanding that God is familiar with suffering through first-hand experience

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