Scott Freeman

Christian preachers, more than all others, should know that
people are starving for God. If anyone in all the world should be able
to say, “I have looked upon thee in the sanctuary, beholding thy power
and glory,” it is the herald of God. Who but preachers will look out
over the wasteland of secular culture and say, “Behold your God!”? Who
will tell the people that God is great and greatly to be praised? Who
will paint for them the landscape of God’s grandeur? Who will remind
them with tales of wonder that God has triumphed over every foe? Who
will cry out above every crisis, “Your God reigns!”? Who will labor to
find words that can carry the “gospel of the glory of the blessed God”?

If God is not supreme in our preaching, where in this world will the
people hear about the supremacy of God? If we do not spread a banquet
of God’s beauty on Sunday morning, will not our people seek in vain to
satisfy their inconsolable longing with the cotton candy pleasures of
pastimes and religious hype? If the fountain of living water does not
flow from the mountain of God’s sovereign grace on Sunday morning, will
not the people hew for themselves cisterns on Monday, broken cisterns
that can hold no water . . .?

We are called to be “stewards of the mysteries of God.” . . . And
the great mystery is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” . . . And that
glory is the glory of God. And “it is required of stewards that they be
found faithful” – faithful in magnifying the supreme glory of the one
eternal God, not magnifying as a microscope that makes small things
look bigger; but as a telescope that makes unimaginably great galaxies
of glory visible to the human eye.

John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Baker, 1990), p. 108-109

“It is pride which had been the
chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began .
. . Pride always means enmity-it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.

In God you come up against
something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that-and therefore
know yourself as nothing in comparison-you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know
God. A proud man is always looking down
on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you
cannot see something that is above you.

That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite
obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to
themselves very religious? I am afraid
it means they are worshipping an imaginary God.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Each week I plan to bring you a website that is worth checking out. This week’s is a site that I have enjoyed thoroughly over the last year or so.
We, as Christians, are called to transform the world, not become so immersed into the popular culture that we are unrecognizable. Much in our common-day incarnation of mainstream Christianity is just that, however, A blending-in.
We often seek to make Christianity more palatable to the masses and end up diluting the message of all of its saving power. The good folks at Christian Counterculture are sounding the call to be revolutionary in our approach to society. Meeting the sinner in love, yes, but with the power of truth.
You may not agree with everything but it is sure to stimulate thought and discussion.
Check it out at: Christian Counterculture.