Love this song (and this musician)

the greatest living Christian songwriter?

John Mark Macmillan: Future/Past

Future/Past

Keeping Religion Out of Politics? Gerhard Forde

One ought indeed to keep religion out of politics. But that means more than merely separating church and state. It means that all religious and mythological ideas and ideologies, all those fantasies and dreams we use to cover our greed and presumption must be exposed and thrown out of politics. It means that all our prejudices, all our self-serving vanities- all of this must be seen for what it is and discarded....

It means that we shall have to learn to make our political decisions without prejudice strictly according to love and justice, according to what is best for taking care of human beings. That is what it means ultimately to keep "religion" out of politics. Keeping religion out of politics is not accomplished by shutting up the voice of the church and prophetic criticism. Indeed that is only to let all kinds of religion in- all those pet religions of the devil that so easily seduce us.

- Gerhard Forde, Where God Meets Man 

Gerhard Forde: Two Tricks of the World's Prince

In the language of Luther, we are under the sway of "the prince of this world". Note that he is not the king; he is for the time being only the prince who has usurped the rule through sin. It is against him that the battle must be wages. His is a very subtle and crafty rule. It is not merely that he tempts us to the more obvious sins of greed, avarice, tyranny , and injustice, but also the more subtle kinds of "religious" sin: that of despising the world and neglecting its concerns. For if he can get us to be so "religious" that we leave the world, he can have it all to himself.

- Gerhard Forde, Where God Meets Man 

Richard Sibbes- Weak Faith?

What some say of rooted faith- fides radicata, that it continues, while weak faith may come to nothing, seems to me to be contradicted by scripture: for, as the strongest faith may be shaken, so the weakest, where truth is, is so far rooted that it will prevail. Weakness with watchfulness will stand, when strength with too much confidence fails. Weakness , with acknowledgment of it, is the fittest seat and subject for God to perfect his strength in; for consciousness of our infirmities drives us out of ourselves to him in who our strength lies.

Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed

Justification is through faith.....

And faith through justification.

After You Are Born Again: Richard Sibbes

Our disposition must be changed. We must be new creatures. They seek for heaven in hell that seek for spiritual love in an unchanged heart.

- Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed

Assurance

I've heard that when John Bunyan was in prison he argued with the prisoners over whether assurance that one is saved inspires piety or grants license. It seems to me that if it inspired piety it is true and if it inspires license it is false, since trust in and love for God (the basis of assurance) is incompatible with license (an attitude of, essentially, exploitation- the opposite of love).