david

Meet David Hensler - aka - "the worm". At least that is what he would like us all to think of him as. However most of us see him as the chief of all prayer warriors.

He works in the industry as an editor and is also a member of Grace Community Church in Los Angeles where he gets to hear John MacArthur preach every week. Hensler loves to intercede on his siblings' (in Christ) behalf, so shoot him a prayer request: davidshensler@gmail.com

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I really have nothing profound to say, so my only hope is to reiterate something well.

My favorite quote: "Τετελεσται"

Biblical Reflections On Homosexuality

The following is an excerpt from Al Mohler's chapter of Sex & The Supremacy Of Christ which was featured on the New Attitude Website:


As Christians, we are charged with the difficult task of compassionate truth-telling. This has never been easy—just ask the apostles—but it is particularly difficult in a time of cultural ferment and sexual revolution. Compassionate truth-telling requires the church to speak from its deepest convictions while demonstrating the love of Christ—speaking truth that will be heard as a hard message while demonstrating the love of Christ through the very act of telling the truth. Compassionate truth-telling means, not only the accurate presentation of biblical truth, but the prayerful and urgent hope that the individuals to whom we speak will be transformed by that truth and respond to the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

The challenge of compassionate truth-telling means that we must think strategically and carefully about how these issues should be addressed, both in terms of individual conversations and in the larger context of public debate. We must ensure not only that we think rightly about these things as ordered by Scripture, but that we speak rightly
about controversial issues as well. We cannot address homosexual marriage as an isolated issue but must place it in the larger context of the Christian worldview and of the great story of God’s purpose in creation and redemption.

T4G - Document Introduction

The following is the Together For The Gospel Document Introduction:


We are brothers in Christ united in one great
cause – to stand together for the Gospel.

We are convinced that the Gospel of Jesus
Christ has been misrepresented, misunderstood, and
marginalized in many churches and among many who
claim the name of Christ. Compromise of the Gospel
has led to the preaching of false gospels, the seduction
of many minds and movements, and the weakening of
the church’s Gospel witness.

As in previous moments of theological and
spiritual crisis in the church, we believe that the
answer to this confusion and compromise lies in a
comprehensive recovery and reaffirmation of the
Gospel – and in Christians banding together in Gospel
churches that display God’s glory in this fallen world.

We are also brothers united in deep concern for
the church and the Gospel. This concern is specifically
addressed to certain trends within the church today.

We are concerned about the tendency of so many
churches to substitute technique for truth, therapy for
theology, and management for ministry.

We are also concerned that God’s glorious
purpose for Christ’s church is often eclipsed
in concern by so many other issues, programs,
technologies, and priorities. Furthermore, confusion
over crucial questions concerning the authority of the
Bible, the meaning of the Gospel, and the nature of
truth itself have gravely weakened the church in terms
of its witness, its work, and its identity.

We stand together for the Gospel – and for a full
and gladdening recovery of the Gospel in the church.
We are convinced that such a recovery will be evident
in the form of faithful Gospel churches, each bearing
faithful witness to the glory of God and the power of
the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

My Heart to Those Whose Hearts I Don’t Want Broken

A broken heart is a tragic thing, but it should never be labeled an accident because anyone who has had a broken heart knows that it came with much time and effort. As humans, we are hard-wired for relationships, and with relationships comes transparency, and with transparency comes vulnerability, and with vulnerability comes risk. The more we risk, the greater potential we have for pain or joy. We can pour our hearts out for years on people, yet there is nothing guaranteeing us that they won’t just turn around and break us to pieces. Humans will always be known for their imperfections because sin covers what we could have been and affects who we are.

I’ll admit to dealing with my own heart being broken and the devastation that comes with it. I was consumed by something that I thought was worth being consumed by. My world was marked by this one individual, and when that individual left my world, it fell apart. I have no one to blame but myself. I was given good advice. I saw the warning signs. I knew the potential risk. But nothing could prepare me for the enslavement that I felt to my emotions. I was captive to my own twisted emotions, and my twisted emotions were captive to my unguarded heart.

The Bible gives a simple command to us in Proverbs 4:23: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” Why “guard your heart”? Why guard it “above all else”? We are called to guard our heart simply because it is the wellspring of life. The imagery the word “wellspring” gives is one of a water source of a waterfall. The heart is the very center of the human and feeds the life of the individual. This is not something to take lightly. This is not a recreational sport that we can flippantly deal with. A corrupt heart feeds a corrupt individual, and a corrupt individual walks directly away from the God that can save him and directly into the Hell that will destroy him.

This command even applies to the area of dating, the most recreational game played in America. Dating is portrayed in such a negative picture that it belittles God’s design for relationships and degrades the biblical portrait of what it means to be a man and woman of God. First of all, if we claim to love God with all our hearts, we cannot give our hearts to those who don’t claim to love God. As Christians, we are called to look different than the world in areas where God has called us to be different, yet we seem to have misunderstood this. Furthermore, we should not recreationally date as the world does, nor should we throw our hearts out as though we are invincible. Our dating life should not look like an episode of Greys Anatomy but should look as though we are marked by the Holy Spirit of the God who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. The way we do this is by protecting our hearts. So, how do we protect our hearts?

1. Wrap your heart in God so that those who pursue you must go to God to find your heart.
   • Your heart has a natural craving for that thing which it was created to crave. And your heart was created to crave the most glorious thing in the entire universe, namely God. God is the all-satisfying object of your soul, so if you miss this, you will miss the true craving of your heart.
   • If you understand that God is the all-satisfying object of your soul, your heart should reflect that. The reflection of your heart will be a wrapping of your heart around God.
   • If your heart is wrapped around God, your heart will be held by Him. If your heart is held by him, anyone who pursues your heart will have to go to God to find it.
     
2. Your heart’s water source should flow from whose you are, not who you are.
   • Who I am is nothing great but whose I am makes all the difference. God makes it clear that we cannot serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). We will hate one and love the other. Make no mistake—your heart, your life, and ultimately your destiny will be defined by whose you are, not who you are.
   • We are confused and tossed to and fro by identity crises, but the real crisis is an ownership crisis and submission to that ownership. We are willing to allow God to be our Savior but hesitate to make Him Lord and Treasure. We cannot separate all of these. Either God is everything to us—Lord, Savior, and Treasure, or He is nothing.
   • God created us and gave us His word so that we could know whose we are and live in such a way that our hearts flow from the well spring of His love and care for us.
   • If you are truly living in glad submission to your creator, your heart will be aligned to His, and guarding it will be a duty of delight not a lifelong fight.
3. Your heart should be consumed with fulfilling the first and greatest commandment, not being filled with your first and newest desire.
   • It is a foundational, necessary, vital, and all-encompassing commandment without which all things fall apart: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” (Matthew 22:37).
   • We, as humans dragged around by the tail of our sin, forget that our lives should be filled with a passion of love for God instead of a consumption with the selfishness of our own longings to be filled with something that is not of God.
   • God calls us to love Him with everything, not because He doesn’t want us to love other things, but because He is the only thing that is truly worth all of our love. God is not a cosmic kill joy; instead, he is the source of all and any joy that we will ever receive.

Guarding our hearts is a joint venture between us and God. We cannot do what God must do, and God will not do what we should do. So, please live for and love God in such a way that when you come to the end of your life, you have your heart in hand and fully preserved, ready to be presented to God as a sacrifice of sweet fragrance. And “above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”

ezekiel's call

Ez2:11 'speak to them and say to them: 'Thus says the Lord God', whether they hear or refuse to hear.'

meet andrew.

Andrew Jacobson is a student at Bethlehem Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is blessed to sit under the teaching of John Piper at Bethlehem Baptist Church.

Andrew is a Christian hedonist and prays that he might one day be blessed to proclaim the word as a teaching pastor. Mr. Jacobson also has a passion for defining and defending the true Gospel of Christ.

The Lord Is Good

In the midst of uncertainty, there is one certain thing. The Lord is good!

Even if my health completely failed...
Even if I lost all my worldly goods...
Even if I had no friends...
Even if I had to suffer the loss of my family...
Even if I had to move again...
Even if I didn't know where my next meal would come from...
Even if I suffered for being a Christian...
Even if I don't feel like acknowledging it...

My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is good. Not because my circumstances are good or rotten, but because He is intrinsically good. It is an attributes that belongs to Him. His goodness is not based on my circumstances or even my ability to perceive His goodness. He is good simply because He is good.

I just wanted to say that because I need to preach to myself. God knows that when difficulties arise, I have been known to doubt the goodness of God. This message serves as a reminder to myself that my sin of doubt and disbelief is just another example of God's goodness to me in that He is patient with my disbelief. In other words, He allows me to sin in disbelief so that I may praise Him even more for His faithfulness to me. I have learned that God does not yet completely sanctify me and He does even this for His glory. In eternity I will see how I sinned as His child and say, "God, you put up with me for so long! I praise you for that."

The Lord is good!

T4G

So here I am at Together For The Gospel amazed. Superheroes of the faith preaching the Word. More to come...

talia video

My friend Andrew at EBC sharing scripture.

Ambassadors For Christ

2 Corinthians 5:16-21 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Because Christ has reconciled us to God, we have now become ambassadors for Christ. We ARE ambassadors. We represent the Lord and His glorious gospel. We speak His message and bear His name wherever we go. It's what we have been called to.

I thought about this truth heavily the other night when I was treated rudely by a person who walked onto our car lot. This lady and her husband militantly walked onto our lot. I approached them and greeted them curtiously. "Hi folks. Welcome. My name is Josh and you are?" My greeting was met with nothing but silence. I didn't get a look in my direction. They continued militantly walking through our lot...at a fast pace, too. So I hurried alongside them and said, "Hello folks, is there something I can help you with?" This time I got a glance, but no verbal communication. The body language said, "Leave me alone!" But it's kind of hard to do that. That's like somebody walking around on your front lawn at home...it's only right to say, "Can I help you?" I asked her another question, "Can I point you to a certain vehicle?" And finally I got some response! She said, "Where are your PT Cruisers?" The conversation had started. Whew! They weren't deaf! I was beginning to think so. I smiled and said, "Oh, they're over this way. Let me show you to them." Boy, I hate sales sometimes.

So anyway, she was walking so fast that I couldn't pass her up and lead her to some cars. I almost had to do the Olympic speed walk that somewhat resembles the Ace Ventura stroll. You know what I mean? But my hips can't move that fast so I followed behind, somewhat trotting along to keep up. But in trailing behind her I noticed that her windbreaker said on the back, "Harbor Welcome Team!" It took about 5 seconds to register in my head that she was probably the member of the greeting team at her church. Ouch! Just got dirted by what seemed to be a Christian. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I was a pastor, so I asked her what her jacket meant. She retorted, "That's my church," and she kept going.

Anyway, I have to say that this was probably one of the rudest guests I've had in a long time. I'm so glad that she didn't run into an unbeliever that night. What a bad ambassador that would have been! How credible does the gospel appear to be from kingdom representatives like that. Yet, I must stop and look at my own life and say, "Is there anything that misrepresents my Lord and Savior?" And the answer is "yes." I, too, fall short of Christ's glory and that is why I need His salvation. And though I sin greatly, my Savior is greater and I am therefore compelled to be an ambassador for Him. The greater I understand my sin to be, the greater my Savior appears to me, the better ambassador I will be for Him.

Christ has reconciled us to God, not counting our sin against us. Now be an ambassador to the world and ask the Lord for the ability to represent and speak for Him well. Help bring people to the one who can save them. And for the sake of God's glory, be nice to unbelievers...even if they are in sales.

By the way, your prayers would be appreciated. The Lord has shown great favor to me at work. I was recently promoted and passed up some senior associates that were next in line for promotion (ahead of me). Consequently, there are some people that are hateful towards me and doing what they can to speak evil of me. I really don't care what people think of me as long as I am rightly representing Christ. If they hate me for that, it's ok. And that's why I am asking for your prayers. It's easy to get caught up in the scuttle, so pray that the Lord helps me to live for Him amongst the hostility. Pray that His glory is displayed through my words and actions. Thanks!

Worship God or Worship Worship?

I'm not sure I see anything wrong with that dude's style (see previous post). Joey Mejia tends to know what's in and what's not. What says he? Oh, wait! I see the problem now. It's the Sprite in his hand. How tacky!

I remember a time in my life when I worshiped worship more than I worshiped the Lord. That is, I enjoyed the experience of singing and playing instruments more than I enjoyed the glory of the Lord. The songs had to be the right tempo and modern enough to attract and keep a crowd, the musicians had to be well enough rehearsed so as not to hinder the "experience", the slides had to have the best fonts and backgrounds to enhance what it was we were doing...and so on. It became clearer and clearer that I treasured the whole production over the glory of the Lord. I was more concerned about orchestrating some sort of experience rather than letting the glory of the Lord shine forth in His word. I acted as if it were possible to manufacture worship in the hearts of the people by the outward manipulating of the environment. You see, this can happen when we look at the Scripture (especially the Old Testament) and see the methods for worship as methods...instead of seeing the methods as anti-types, with Christ being the reality--the type.
D.A. Carson comments on worship.

"We worship our Creator-God "precisely because he is worthy, delightfully so." What ought to make worship delightful to us is not, in the first instance, its novelty or its aesthetic beauty, but its object: God himself is delightfully wonderful, and we learn to delight in him.

In an age increasingly suspicious of (linear) thought, there is much more respect for the "feeling" of things--whether a film or a church service. It is disturbingly easy to plot surveys of people, especially young people, drifting from a church of excellent preaching and teaching to one with excellent music because, it is alleged, there is "better worship" there. But we need to think carefully about this matter. Although there are things that can be done to enhance corporate worship, there is a profound sense in which excellent worship cannot be attained merely by pursuing excellent worship...Despite protestations, one sometimes wonders if we are beginning to worship worship rather than worship God. As a brother put it to me, it's a bit like those who begin by admiring the sunset and soon begin to admire themselves admiring the sunset."

My point is not to tear down those who use instruments or are careful in planning church services. My point is simply to warn against the activity that may appear outwardly OK, but does not focus on delight in the Lord. Worship that results in enjoyment of the activity but not enjoyment is God is false worship. Such is the case when worship leaders go to conferences to see such-and-such an artist. Having come away from a conference with little to say about "God" but much to say about the "worship leader", one wonders if worshiping worship is what has taken place. Sometimes it looks like the picture above. Indeed I have been guilty of that. May we guard against that. I guess the same could be said of our listening to preachers. Do we want our pastors and preachers to be good and instruct us well? Of course. But it's not primarily that they are great preachers, but that they speak of a great God. It's Christ we worship. We gather together as saints, not primarily to hear great preachers, but to hear them tell us what God has said SO THAT we may find ultimate joy, pleasure and satisfaction in Him.

And so when we gather together in worship, the Word must be central for it tells of the excellencies of Christ. 1 Peter 1:10-12 tells us that the Old Testament prophets served us by preaching God's Word, the gospel, the good news, Christ (which was then delivered by the Apostles). Even they preached for us to know Christ as our all-consuming object of worship for the great salvation He gives us. If you are convinced that the Old Testament is primarily about examples of faith, or methods of worship, rather than Christ Himself, then meditate on this Scripture and understand that the purpose of Scripture is to draw you to Christ so that you may know and love Him. Do not get caught up in worshiping worship. Worship Christ our Savior.

1 Peter 1:10-12 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

Umm....we're going to need some accountability here.

What if you were left to yourself to decide what looked good with no outside help whatsoever?


That’s what kind of accountability in our Christian walk is. It is the outside perspective and help of other believers who tell us when we are being foolish and sinful. The insufficiency with self help books is that it does not acknowledge that man is inadequate and is need of help from the God who is perfect & true and fellow brothers and sisters who share the same love for this truth. For humans who are incapable of knowing what is right need a supernatural being beyond ourselves to inform us to keep us from going wayward and being “wise” in our own eyes.

Well if our spiritual walks were our outer appearance then what would some of us look like?

The WORST business plan ever!

As a business major in my graduate studies, it is becoming more self-evident that Gods way of doing things is really bad at making money. I mean the character traits of selflessness, sacrifice, generosity, honesty mixed with the service of ministry is not exactly a compelling business plan for worldly investors.

It is disturbing to see teachers, preachers, and businessmen who proclaim Gods word and use it as a means of financial gain. What is worse is that it has made its way into the church. The Bible speaks clearly on this;

“(there is) constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of truth , who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.” 1 Timothy 6: 5



Do not get me wrong, people do not go into hell by being rich. (There are plenty of wealthy people in heaven) But people go into hell by being greedy. Paul talks about a different kind of wealth and gain in the next verse.

“But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment” v 6

I know one of the richest people in the world whose name will remain anonymous. He lives in a modest apartment in Los Angeles and lives of 25% of his income. With his remaining income, time, and resources he spends ministering to others, evangelizing the Word, and helping those in need. Although he may not be able to afford a huge house or gourmet meals what he gets in return…..money cannot buy.

He has built up the kingdom of God, has a spirit of peace and contentment, and has an influence with people that cannot be bought. This is what God must have been talking about in verse 6.