Archives: January 2010

30 Jan 2010, Comments Off

Learning from the Spiritual

Author: Elijah Layfield

“The Black-culture sermon is the homiletical twin brother to the spiritual.  In the case of the sung culture, a whole song can be formed on a very small word base. Haunting choruses are built on as few as four words: ‘Remember me, O Lord, remember me.’ Where a white-culture hymn has long stanzas full of words delivered at a fairly rapid rate, a Black spiritual might simply say slowly, ‘Lord, I want to be a Christian in my heart.’ The slow rate of Black preaching, as well as the repetition, is the natural pattern of Black speaking and singing, neither of which is prone to depend on great numbers of words in a brief utterance” (Mitchell, Black Preaching, 175).

29 Jan 2010, Comments Off

Thank God for Absent-Mindedness

Author: Elijah Layfield

“The eccentric digressions of an absent-minded professor constitute one of the chief delights of listening to him; otherwise one might just as well cull his material direct from books” (John Stott, Between Two Worlds, 225).

28 Jan 2010, Comments Off

What Does Love Have to Do with Outreach?, Thirsty Thursday (Jan 25, 2010)

Author: Elijah Layfield

Thirsty Thursday
Fueling Your Passion to Treasure Christ by Providing Grace-saturated Audio Sermons

“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” (Psalm 42:1-2 ESV)

What Does Love Have to Do with Outreach, by Elijah Layfield

John 13.35

Preached on 2009.11.29

28 Jan 2010, Comments (4)

200 Posts. What’s the Point?

Author: Elijah Layfield

This is the 200th post for the Treasuring Christ website. Many more than that have been posted in the past, but some didn’t make it for the long haul, or through second-editing, or from the site reboot. Nevertheless, it’s a round enough number to make me want to clarify what I’m aiming to do on this website. Let me walk you through some thoughts I have about treasuringChrist.net.

  1. I exist and this site exists to spread a passion for treasuring Christ above all things personally, for the glory of God corporately, and to the joy of all peoples globally. That means that as the culture goes more spiritual, I want to go more Christ-ward. It means that I care about the local church corporately. It means that I want to see the impact of this site and ministry growing in the next 5, 10, 15, 30 or so years. But, today, we exist in small ways for God’s supremacy.
  2. I’ve relaunched the site to make it easier to search for information and navigate through the content. There are growing pains with this. Many pages haven’t made the transition yet. It will be a slow process. But, I hope it will be worth it in the long run.
  3. I’ve lost a good bit of my audience in the change. This was to be expected. I’m okay building up my readership again as we present quality content on a consistent basis.
  4. The blog posts are quote heavy on my part. That’s intentional for a couple of reasons. First, I recognize that the attention span of readers is short. The quotes that are present are usually pregnant with meaning and quick to be read. Second, I find it massively helpful to have library of quotes on different topics readily available as I study, write, and preach. There may be sites out there doing this already, but I don’t know of any. So, I’m laboring to make this useful.
  5. Sermons will become a major part of this site again over time. One of the main reasons I started treasuringChrist.net was to host a large quantity of trustworthy sermons for the church at large. I’ve been so helped by audio sermons. I hope to continue to offer more and more sermons that satisfy the thirst of those panting after Christ.
  6. I hope to continue to add to the repository of articles by myself and others on theological, biblical, and cultural topics over the coming years. I hope we can go deep with God’s word into this world together.

Treasuring Christ with you,

Elijah Layfield

27 Jan 2010, Comments (4)

What Was I Reading in 2009?

Author: Elijah Layfield

For those five people (high estimate rounded up, of course) who might be interested in what I read last year:  here we go.

Theology
God’s Passion for His Glory, John Piper (Reread)
A Theology as Big as the City, Ray Bakke
Puritan Papers Volume One, Edited by J.I. Packer
The Nature of True Virtue, by Jonathan Edwards
Church Planting from the Ground Up, edited by Tom Jones
The Soliloquies, by Augustine
The Legacy of Sovereign Joy, by John Piper (Reread)
Disciples Are Made Not Born, by Walter Henrichsen (Reread)
Spiritual Leadership, J. Oswald Sanders
The Life of God in the Soul of Man, by Henry Scougal (Reread)
Book One of Natural Theology in Biblical Theology, by John Owen
Total Church, by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis
Grace Unknown, by R.C. Sproul
Harmony of Science and Scripture, by Dennis Lindsay
The Reason for God, by Tim Keller
The Reformed Pastor, by Richard Baxter (Reread)
The Decline of African American Theology, by Thabiti Anyabwile
Knowing God, by J.I. Packer (Reread)
Systematic Theology, by Wayne Grudem
ESV Bible
Revelation and Inspiration, by B.B. Warfield
Puritan Reformed Spirituality, by Joel Beeke
Ante-Nicene Fathers Volume 1
Institutes of the Christian Religion Book 2, by John Calvin

Marriage
The Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman

Fiction
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by Frank Baum
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin
Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson
Legend, by David Gemmell
The Well of Ascension, by Brandon Sanderson
The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
The Gathering Storm, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by Frank Baum (Reread)
X-Men 2, by Chris Claremont
The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy

Ethics/Social Justice
Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions, by Randy Alcorn

Philosophy
Consequences of Ideas, by R.C. Sproul
Validity of Interpretation, by E.D. Hirsch
Critical Thinking, by Max Black

History
1776, by David McCullough
David, by Chuck Swindoll
Here I Stand, Roland Bainton

26 Jan 2010, Comments Off

When the Fog Lifts, Pounce!

Author: Elijah Layfield

“I wonder if your experience resembles mine. My mind is usually enveloped in a fairly thick fog, so that I do not see things at all plainly. Occasionally, however, the fog lifts, the light breaks through, and I see with limpid clarity. These fleeting moments of illumination need to be seized. We have to learn to surrender ourselves to them, before the fog descends again. Such times often come at awkward moments, in the middle of the night, when somebody else is preaching or lecturing, while we are reading a book, even during a conversation. However inconvenient the time, we cannot afford to lose it. In order to take fullest advantage of it, we may need to write fast and furiously” (Stott, John, Between Two Worlds, 219).

25 Jan 2010, Comments (4)

How God Works to Convert the Wicked

Author: Brian

Here are a few words from Richard Baxter’s A Call to the Unconverted:

“The Father sends the Son; the Son redeems us, and makes the promise of grace; the Holy Ghost indites and seals this gospel; the apostles are the secretaries of the Spirit to write it; the preachers of the gospel do proclaim it, and persuade men to obey it; and the Holy Ghost does make their preaching effectual, by opening the hearts of men to entertain it. And all this to repair the image of God upon the soul; and to set the heart upon God again, and take it off the creature and carnal self, to which it is revolted; and so to turn the current of the life into a heavenly course, which before was earthly ; and all this by the entertainment of Christ by faith, who is the physician of the soul.”

Such a complete picture of the workings of God in and through the church for His glory! These words have strengthened and encouraged my soul as I read them recently. I pray they do yours as well.

Re:
Wisdom from an Old, Dead Guy
Brian’s 2010 Reading List

24 Jan 2010, Comments Off

Forgiving to be Feared

Author: Elijah Layfield

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities” (Psalm 130 ESV).

23 Jan 2010, Comments (2)

Parents, Let Your Children Stand, Or They Will Fall

Author: Elijah Layfield

“Nothing creates spiritual babies as much as pastors who will make all the decisions for the people. There are not only pastors or churches, but sometimes there are entire movements in which the goal is to tell everyone what to think and do every moment of the day. You create automatons who, apart from that instruction, do not have the ability to stand. We see this most in our lives today when young people go to college. People have been raised in Christian homes, they have been under Christian preaching and teaching, and they go to college where it is no holds barred for them. Often that is because we have taught Christian young people everything they ought to do and put such controls on them that they have never made their own decisions. As a parent of teens, it is extremely hard to know what to do. When do I encourage you to gain the strength to stand and step back so that you will stand on your own feet?” (Bryan Chapell, “Christ-Centered Preaching,” Lecture 15).

20 Jan 2010, Comments (3)

Racism and the Southern Baptist Convention

Author: Elijah Layfield

Doug Baker over at BaptistMessenger.com asks the question, “Racism and the SBC: Does the Legacy Continue?”:

Yet, within the borders of the Southern Baptist Convention, [Pastor Ken Fentress] is quick to state that more work must be done when it comes to applying the Gospel to the issue of race. Like many African-Americans, he is appreciative of the resolution passed by the Convention on June 20, 1995 when the messengers offered an apology for the insensitivity and pain perpetrated by many within the SBC on matters of race. Although radical racism could be traced back to the founding of the SBC, and the history of many of the churches of the denomination was stained with a legacy of racial profiling and protests against equality, Fentress appreciated their courage and commitment to change.

HT: Russell Moore

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