Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir. . . of Sorts by Ian Morgan Cron

This is the story of Ian Morgan Cron’s life, with a particular focus on his experience of Jesus, and his relationship with his father which was rocky to say the least, and which involved his job at the CIA. This book does exactly what it says on the tin.

I enjoyed Cron’s storytelling in his interesting biography (of sorts) of Saint Francis, so hoped this book would meet my high expectations – it absolutely did. I found myself laughing out loud as he told stories of himself as a young child, intrigued by his father’s jobs and past, blinking back tears as some of he told of some of the really tough times, and thoroughly encouraged by the grace of God throughout.

When you have endorsements from everyone from the Archibishop of Canterbury to Brian McLaren and Craig Groeschel you can be certain that there will be bits that are theologicallycomfortable and uncomfortable to any reader, but Cron’s experience, humility and love for God shine through, even if I found myself raising an eyebrow or two at certain occasions. Groeschel claimed that ‘Each turn of the page will draw you closer to God.’ I’m not sure I quite found that to be the case, but the book as a whole is wonderful, and the revelation of God through Cron’s life is clear.

I’d recommend this book to everyone really – the storytelling is great and compelling, the story is heart-wrenching and funny, and God’s grace is wonderfully revealed. Five stars from me!

I got this book for free from BookSneeze.com. I’m not required to give a positive review.

Live action anime fighting

Gotta love it.

Proverbs 1:9

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‘Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.’ (Proverbs 1:8-9)

Last week we looked at verse 8 and what it meant (effectively to listen to the instruction and experience of those who are more experienced), and this week we see the reason why we ought to do that.

 

Find out what it’s there for

A cheesy phrase which someone told me when I first became a Christian, and which has stuck with me ever since, related to understanding the Bible. A guy called Jonty said, ‘If you see a therefore, find out what it’s there for.’ The same is true about any linking word, and this verse begins with ‘for’ – to truly understand this passage, we need to understand how verse 8 relates to verse 9, and on this occasion it’s pretty straightforward: verse 9 gives the reason why we should follow the instructions of verse 8.

Solomon’s basically saying here that following your parents’ teaching is like wearing beautiful jewellery. It’s perhaps not the easiest analogy for men to understand, but I do think that he is highlighting that listening to those wiser than us has the same effects that jewellery does – let’s look at some key characteristics of jewellery.

To highlight

The two items of jewellery mentioned here are a garland for your head, and a pendant for your neck. Note that these would provide a frame for your face. One of jewellery’s primary characteristics is that it highlights key features. So, if you have beautiful slender fingers, wearing a nice ring would highlight that to anyone who looked at them. One feature that wisdom has is that it highlights to others your characteristics which are already strong. So, if you are a great evangelist, becoming wiser will actually enhance that gift. The same is true of you if you are a preacher, or serve tea and coffee, or whatever it is. Wisdom enhances the gifts we already have.

To stand out

But jewellery doesn’t sit there only to highlight your natural features, it is intended to be beautiful in its own right. Nothing beats natural beauty, but wearing nice jewellery can make some appear even more beautiful because it can be nice and twinkly. Similarly, wisdom is a good addition to anyone’s personality. Even if you are gifted in all sorts of different things, adding wisdom is a guaranteed way to become more ‘attractive’ in your personality, and more effective in your ministry, whatever shape that may take.

To display wealth

One of the biggest reasons to wear jewellery is to publicly display how wealthy you are. Whenever a rich man proposes, it is now expected that the ring will cost more than most of us earn in a year. By wearing jewellery, the fiancée is declaring how much her lover is willing to spend on her. And perhaps this is the most important truth about wisdom. Wisdom speaks to other people about the generosity of our God. It is expected that if you are wearing a beautiful piece of jewellery, a friend will say, ‘that is just gorgeous, where did you get it?’ opening up an opportunity for you to say, ‘my husband bought it for me!’ Wisdom should do the same for us; by enhancing our other gifts, and by being attractive on its own, others should ask us, ‘how did you become so wise?’ opening up the opportunity for us to say, ‘God gave it all to me.’

What is the church?

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I read an article recently about martyrdom. I’m odd like that.

I’d always taken it as read that martyrdom was fertiliser for the gospel – John Piper’s teaching on this had always been encouraging, Paul’s words about ‘filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions’ (Colossians 1:24) as well as testimonies from all over the world had underlined this assumption. Not to mention Tertullian’s famous quote, ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church’.

But this article had a slightly different take on the whole issue of martyrdom, and pointed out that:

the membership of the Evangelical Christian Baptists (registered and unregistered) in the Soviet Union had dropped from approximately 1,000,000 in 1926 to just under 249,000 in 1993…The Communists almost succeeded.

So on this occasion the size of the church actually shrunk due to persecution.

Or did it?

I have no doubt whatsoever that the number of church members shrunk, but I wonder whether our definition of the church needs to be rethought for this – does the fact that you’re a member of a local church mean that you’re a member of the global church?

I think that the author of this article is talking only about the visible church. Even after seeing these statistics I’d still say that the church was potentially growing under persecution, because those who left the church would most likely be those who attended without having submitted their entire lives to Christ.

Not trying to be controversial, just a thinking point – if the church you attend was subjected to persecution would you leave?

Can you be a part of the global body of Christ without being part of the visible church?

The best observation of sport as entertainment I’ve ever seen

Ok, so this is based on a particular NBA news story but is instantly applicable to every sports fan everywhere.

Well worth watching all the way through – laugh-out-loud hilarious while still being true and somehow quite depressing as well.

But good.

Anyone up for some local volunteering?

Korn’s lead guitarist is a Christian

I was a teenager in the 90s, and Korn was a very successful heavy metal band.

One of the band members became a Christian after his estate agent invited him to church. This video’s worth its eight minutes to raise your faith.

Reflection on John MacArthur

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John MacArthur, after 43 years, making notes on pen and paper he has now preached on every single verse of the New Testament.

There’s a really good summary of his achievement over here, but I think we should all be challenged by this.

A quick aside: I don’t think there’s any difference between John MacArthur’s faithfulness in preaching to the entire world and a single Mum’s faithfulness bringing up her children well – the servant with one talent is required to be just as faithful as the servant with five. So God looks at faithfulness, not fruitfulness…

But that’s not where I’m going today.

When MacArthur was still a relatively young man he decided that he wanted to start preaching through the New Testament verse-by-verse, and he has achieved that goal. That requires patience and perseverance, but he has now done it.

Do you need to set a challenge for yourself that you will not achieve for another 40 years? Let’s do it to the glory of God.

And, of course, the entire sermon back catalogue is available for free over here.

Serious Wednesday: Proverbs 1:8

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‘Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching,’ (Proverbs 1:8)

Mums and Dads

We’re still in the first chapter of Proverbs, and Solomon seems keen to mention a key theme that he will return to again and again: we should listen to our parents’ instruction and experience. I think this talks to three groups of people.

To those with parents

If your parents are still alive, regardless of your age, it’s important that we honour our parents by listening to them. We should obey their instructions (providing they are not contrary to Scripture or the wishes of our spouse), and genuinely weigh up any other advice they give us. Quite simply, our parents have been around longer than we have, and we would do well to do everything we can to benefit from that extended experience. How much better would Solomon have fared if he had taken on board the wisdom of his father? Solomon was the illegitimate child of David and Bathsheba, yet he did not learn from it and ended up becoming a sex addict himself. Let’s listen to our parents.

To parents

On the flip side, as parents we need to be careful in how we pass on wisdom to our children. We need to be careful to instruct our children clearly, and in a way which will benefit them the most. This means making sure that we don’t force anything down our children’s throats, but that we take every available opportunity to make sure our kids are being taught. If you’re watching a TV programme with your kids, and one of the characters commits a sin but is not punished for it, pause the TV and talk about it! If you can’t pause live TV, make a quick note of it, and bring it up round the dining table. Don’t allow opportunities to pass you by. We’ll press into more practical examples of this as we progress through this series.

To everyone

I think that Solomon’s main point in this introduction is to heed the advice of those who have more experience than us. His example is of a son and his parents, but I’m sure we could just as easily replace these with a child and his school teacher, or a brand new Christian and her church pastor. It’s tempting for Christians in my generation (in their ‘post-modern’ 18-35s) to think that we need to redefine everything about church; we think that the older generation are stuck in their ways and are not willing to change to engage our peers. We must all approach those who are older, or more experienced, and wiser than we are, and ask questions: ‘Why do you do things that way?’ ‘Why don’t you like my idea to…?’ That way, we have the opportunity to become wise beyond our years.

To finish, it’s really worth saying that this should not be something limited to those who are simply younger/older than one another. While someone older than you may well be wiser, it may be the case that you need to humble yourself and admit that those younger than you may have wisdom you are yet to attain. Whoever you are, seek out those who are wise, and learn everything you can from them.

Baptism in the Spirit

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Last weekend I had the privilege of attending the 300 conference hosted by Jubilee church in Enfield, North London. Terry Virgo, the founder of the network of churches I’m part of, spoke on baptism in the Spirit among other things.

Now, I’m certainly not going to do it justice here so I want to say: watch the videos over here…but I do want to sum up what I got out of the day.

Terry is an incredibly humble man and told his story of becoming a Christian, and discovering the Holy Spirit. He was reading the New Testament and had questions about what had happened to the Holy Spirit, who seemed so active in the early church.

He researched a wide variety of people’s experiences and biblical convictions, and essentially discovered a few different perspectives:

No-one is filled with the Spirit any more

This just doesn’t add up. No-one in their right mind could read the New Testament and draw the conclusion that the Spirit was going away; the Old Testament constantly talks about the future age of the Spirit, where God’s Spirit would be ‘poured out on all flesh’ (Joel 2), so a move from the Spirit being poured out on individuals, to a bunch of Galileans, to no-one…is a bit of a step backward. Some who hold this position point out that the later letters written in the Bible don’t talk about the spiritual gifts so they must have ceased – and that’s simply an illogical argument.

Every Christian is filled with the Spirit at conversion

This theory is essentially that being born again of the Spirit (converted) means being baptised in the Spirit, and that the infilling of the Spirit increases over time through ever-growing fruit of the Spirit. But that’s not what the New Testament seems to say. We are told that the Spirit ‘fell on’ Christians (Acts 10:44) rather than growing from the inside. It’s also particularly noted that being filled with the Spirit is particularly noted as something that happened after conversion – Acts 8:14-17 shows us that the apostles had heard of new Christians, so sent them Peter and John because the Holy Spirit ‘had not yet fallen on any of them’.

We should hold tarrying meetings

This is the traditional Pentecostal position, which says that like the disciples did at Pentecost Christians should hold meetings in which they wait, or tarry, for the Spirit to fall. People who hold this position often claim that the gift of tongues is the initial evidence of being filled with the Spirit. The problem with this is that Jesus told the disciples to wait specifically for the outpouring of the Spirit, so that they would be empowered for mission.

The second blessing

Some talk of the baptism of the Spirit as an experience that happens after you have been a Christian for a while – you have to empty yourself before allowing the Spirit to refill you. But this doesn’t add up either – brand new converts in Acts 10:44 were filled with the Spirit, apparently at conversion!

It’s all about Jesus

This is Terry Virgo’s position. One argument used for baptism in the Spirit happening at some point after conversion is Acts 19; Paul arrive in Ephesus and ask the Ephesians if they had received the Spirit when they believed (a telling question). The Ephesians reply that they have never even ‘heard that there is a Holy Spirit’. This seems to confuse Paul, who then asks what baptism they had received. The answer: John’s baptism.

These Ephesians are called disciples in the Bible text, yet have received John the Baptist’s baptism of repentance without ever realising who Jesus is! So Paul explains to them, ‘John baptised with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.’ When they hear about Jesus they are baptised into his name, and it’s only after that that Paul lays on hands and they receive the Spirit.

Terry said that his number one passage for this is John 7:37-39:

Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

The key to being filled with the Spirit is a thirst to be filled, and the place to go is to Jesus.

Final words

I’ve probably miscommunicated some of this so to clarify any misunderstanding I’d really recommend you get a copy of Terry’s latest book, The Spirit Filled Church.

Let's Get Real by Dale and Jena Forehand

Based on the Bible and the Forehands’ experience, Dale and Jena’s aim in this book is to inspire and equip couples to live an authentic marriage, giving husbands and wives the tools to communicate better and not present themselves as the perfect couple while remaining hostile behind closed doors.

I found this book a refreshing detour from the typical marriage books I find myself reading. Far from the dream couple who are showing off how great their marriage is, the Forehands have experienced unimaginable pain through marriage breakdown and divorce before having experienced grace and reconciliation through a successful remarriage.

I like the underlying goal of this book, and I like the specific advice given to couples. The characteristics that the authors say husbands and wives should aim to be are spot on, and are rarely mentioned so it’s good to see them here. Perhaps this is my naivety but I think that the majority of the tips given are likely to already be a part of many happy marriages so for a lot of readers this may be more an encouragement than a significant step forward, but that doesn’t undermine the book’s excellent content.

I also really liked the fact that the book so regularly went back to what the Bible said; at every stage the Forehands humbly acknowledge that the only reason they were reconciled was a result of God’s power, and that’s really good to see.

I wouldn’t recommend this book to every couple. For a healthy Christian marriage I think there are better books out there that will motivate even more growth in intimacy, but this book is designed very well for couples who are going through a tough time. I’d recommend this book for any marriage which is experiencing any level of struggle, and I’d recommend you read it as a couple with another couple you’re comfortable with, to mediate if necessary.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from NavPress Publishers as part of their Blogger Review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”