Seedplots

Some time ago my wife and I started listening to a series of audio biographies of famous Christian leaders.

John Piper has presented these yearly over the past 20 years at his church’s yearly pastor’s conferences and the recordings are available online here.

Here are two lessons I’ve learned through listening to this series:

Lesson 1
I learned that it is important to read “outside our generation.” Each generation has it own strengths and weakness  — and its own blind spots.  We seem to automatically think that “new is better.” Perhaps with technology this is true – the realm of ideas is different.  New is not always better!  As a fish isn’t aware of the water it swims in, so we are unaware of our cultural blind spots until we step out of our culture and view our world from a different vantage point. When we read “outside our generation” we quickly spot the “blind spots” of that age…  How could they have been so blind? we ask.   It is when we are enabled to stand outside of day and age that we begin to be aware of our own blind splits.  Reading older classics can help us do that.

As a result of this lesson, I made a mental resolution to try reading outside my generation (in spite of my inward resistance to “old” books).

Lesson 2
I learned about the power of the beauty of Christ and his glory to give us a longing for holiness and bring us to repentance. My natural inclination is to think that we promote holy living by preaching and teaching against sin. That is true, but it’s only “one side of the story.” Putting the emphasis there easily slides into legalism . . . “to be a good Christian you have to do this, and this and this …”

What was new to me was the realization that the more we see who Christ is, the more we become aware of our own sinfulness (a good thing!  “Blessed are the pour in Spirit,” Jesus said) and mourn over it (i.e. repent, “Blessed are those who mourn”).  This fills us with a fresh longing to please God who did so much for us on the cross (“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness”).

The result is a very different motivation for holy living; one which isn’t legalistic and condemning of those “less holy” than us.