Often one of the biggest barriers to our spiritual growth can be our desire to be moral. This sounds like the opposite of what you might think: isn’t it good for our spiritual growth for us to be good people? This desire to be good, however, can be very dangerous to our spiritual growth and to the gospel. In a recent article, Dr. John Coe of Talbot Seminary talked about this danger and called it “the temptation of moral formation.” He defined it as “attempting to deal with our spiritual failure, guilt and shame by means of spiritual efforts, by attempting to perfect oneself in the power of the self.” In a recent two-week Venture sermon series, we discussed Coe’s article and the temptation of moral formation. If you did not hear these sermons, I would encourage you to listen to them. Direct links to the sermons are here:
August 2 The Temptation to be Moral
August 9 Spiritual Formation and the Cross
The gist of the message of the sermons is this: we are to give up the quest to be moral, the drive to improve ourselves and assuage our guilt and shame through our own self-improvement efforts, and we are to rest in the perfect love, perfect forgiveness, and perfect acceptance that we have in Jesus.
I encourage you to listen to the sermons because this discussion is going to be very important to much of what we will be discussing as a community moving forward in sermons, retreats, etc. Also, practically, the sermons will help:
-to define what moral formation is, and how to identify it in our lives
-to understand why we try to improve ourselves
-to be honest about our weaknesses and failures, and to run to the cross
-to experience the perfect love, forgiveness, and acceptance in Jesus
-to trust Jesus to transform us and his Spirit to strengthen us to follow him
So listen to the sermons if you haven’t, and feel free to post any discussion here as a comment.
We have been preaching through Isaiah for the past 4 months and are nearing the end of the first major section, chapters 1-39. Before we move into chapters 40-66, we are going to take one Sunday, Feb 15, to summarize what we have covered and answer any questions you may have. So please, go ahead and submit your questions. They can be questions about the passages themselves, about applications that we have discussed, about the history and culture behind Isaiah…pretty much anything that has something to do with Isaiah 1-39. You can submit your questions as comments below, or you can send them by email to danny@venture-online.org, or you can simply ask them live on Sunday morning Feb. 15.
In the sermon on Isaiah 6 this past Sunday, we were challenged to consider the differences between us and God. This is so that we can really understand why we are called to serve others, namely, for the glory of God and Christ. Three of the main differences between us and God are: Read More…
I am posting an outline of last week’s sermon, an introduction to the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is a complex book that covers a long period in Judah’s history. Therefore having these notes on hand will be helpful. Going through Isaiah is going to be important for us. The book is a clear call to servanthood. It challenges us to deny ourselves and to trust God to provide for us and give us strength to serve and love others. Here are the notes: Read More…
Just a reminder of the assignments that we given in the past two sermons about marriage from Ephesians 5:22-33. Husbands, you are to 1) take your wives out on a date and tell why you love them, 2) talk to your wives about where you are in your spiritual life right now (and ask her about where she is), and 3) express to her that, apart from Christ, she is first in your life, and then talk to her about how you are doing with that.
Wives, remember, you are to write three “respect” letters or notes to your husbands that say, “I respect you because…”
I made a mistake in the sermon this morning. In a discussion for how wives are supposed to be a higher prioroty for husbands than other things (espcially career), I made a statement like this: “I talk to guys in ministry and they say, ‘Ministry first, Jesus first’, but that’s wrong. Your wife comes first.” Well, it was a mistake for me to say that our wives are more important than Jesus. This is not true. Jesus is certainly a higher priority for husbands (in ministry or not) than their wives. I had not planned on making this statement (and I did not even realize that I did say it until about 5 people approached me after the sermon about it). So please forgive me. I do not want to mislead you about this. Pursuing Christ and your relationship with him is the chief priority of everyone, including husbands.
At the same time, I think it is important that wives are a higher priority than anything else other than Christ, even more important than any ‘ministry’ that a husband might do (the actual point I was trying to make). If we are to truly love our wives and give ourselves for them sacrificially (Eph 5:25), then our wives have to be our highest priority (apart from Christ). And while the pull of career and achievement and ministry is so strong for husbands, they have to prioritize thier wives above those things.
Again, I aplogize for any confusion this caused you. Thanks a lot for your patience with me. Danny
We just returned from the Venture Fall Retreat. As a reminder for those who went, and to let the people who did not go on the retreat know about it, I would like to make a few posts over the next couple of weeks to summarize what was talked about and discussed. It was a great weekend. More spcifically, it was a challenging weekend. We were challenged to create a culture of service within the Venture ministry that helps us to grow together in Christ and to love and serve the world around us. The topic of today’s post is actually a question. It is a question that was raised on the retreat to help us start thinking about having a culture of service. The question is: does Venture have a culture of service right now?
The answer to that question, I think, is “not really.” Read More…