JR Vassar

I don't remember how I came across @jrvassar from @apostlesNYC or why I started to follow him on twitter, but I am glad I did it. Pastor Vassar's preaching engages you in a way that gives you the feeling that he's talking directly and only to you. I recently listened to a brief series of his and I highly recommend it. Here are the titles:

1-Marriage and Men
2-Gospel, Community, and Mission
3-Marriage and Women
4-Intentional Singleness
5-Gospel parenting.

Suffering

I'm here once again, preparing for the wonderfully terrifying task of preaching. The topic I hit this time is "suffering", which is a massive undertaking, so first of all, pray for me. I've been immersing myself into the Sovereignty of God over whatsoever comes to pass and his goodness in all that He does and, although I'm not going to deal with the aspect of biblical manhood in the prospect of suffering or in the midst of suffering, I cannot help but have some thoughts crossing my mind. So I'll blog a little bit in my break.
I really think that one of the most important things Christians have to do is to have a good, solid, TRUE theology of suffering. We have to know our God and his providence. We gotta know him and we gotta know him well. I also think that men have a moral responsibility to have that theology as tight as possible, just as much as we have to have a life insurance policy, for example. If we can have a life insurance policy and we don't, I actually believe it to be sin. We men are called by God to lead, protect and provide and I think that a good life insurance policy hits all three corners of our call directly or indirectly. In the same way, a true, solid theology of suffering will carry us through the sure afflictions of our lifetime. To know our God deeply in your mind and heart will allow you to suffer well. Therefore you'll will lead your family in godliness through the storms of life by word and example. A biblical theology of suffering, will protect your flock ( be it your church or family) during those times when we are most tempted to doubt God's love for his children and the reality of our faith. It arms them against the enemies of their souls trying to snatch their faith, their affections for Christ. It also provides to those lead and protected by you, with the stability they need in their leader. To have a solid theology of suffering that has no connection between knowledge and behavior does no good to you nor to them but if your theology is strongly connected, it will generate a sense of security, enabling those under your care to submit to you out of joy not fear. All we have to do to experience suffering is to live long enough. It will come. Our Lord has said " In the world you will have tribulations..." We have to prepare before it happens so when it does, our God is magnified and his banner flies high as we stand strong in the joy of the Lord.
"There is no sweeter fellowship than the fellowship of suffering."
John Piper
(Paraphrased. T4G '08)

Mr. Helio Gracie

Adolescence

I was a punk rock kid for many years. In many ways, I think a little bit of that element still resides in me. I was different, (just like all of the other kids). I was politically informed and believed in social reform but spray painted anarchy symbols all around town, believed in education as a means to a brighter day and ditched school frequently to meditate on it. Believed in peace while hating and hunting skinheads and metal heads because they didn't. Why is it that we whooped the hippies then? Oh yeah, just for fun. We listened to Adolescents and glorified slogans like "Brats in battalions". There was this deep, innate desire to be a man but there was no knowledge of Christ to become one. We were adolescents though, and that bought us at least 7 years. From 12 to 19 we have the right to be as stupid as we can, to do all kinds of contradictory things, engage in irresponsible, inconsequential behavior because our hormones are out of control. "That's what teenagers do", people say.
This notion of adolescence has become wildly accepted even in Christian circles lately.
I understand the whole hormone thing being a big hurdle to jump over, but according to the Bible, sin is sin whether you're fourteen or forty four. Scripture does not have such low expectations from teens. Paul even left Mark behind because he "broke". David, the red headed, short shepherd kid whacked Goliath defending the Name of God very early on in his life. God spoke with Samuel at a very early age, Mary, Jesus' mom, was very young and God placed on her an incredible responsibility. I guess one of my favorites is the story about those fools that mocked Elisha about his bald head and next thing you know, mother bear is out of the woods and they're dinner.
It seems to me that the biblical pattern for young men and women is one of expectation of godliness, entrustment of responsibilities and accountability. In other words, sin is not brushed over but young men are expected to be godly and when they aren't, they either repent or suffer the consequences of their sin. That is the expectation of godliness.
Also neither the family, nor the covenant community will shy away from delegating certain responsibilities to our young men because they are young. That may happen for different reasons (i.e gifting, amount of responsibilities already on them etc...) but never because they are "adolescents". The family and the church place certain responsibilities on the young men and women and expect godliness from them in fulfilling those responsibilities. Finally, young men are to be held accountable for their behavior just as much as everybody else. Being young is never to be an excuse for lack of spiritual growth, negligence of duties, reckless behavior or any sinful practice or belief.
God uses these (and other) means to produce in young men the characteristics that will define them as men, which has much less to do with biology or time walking on earth than it does with a reality of being, a stage of maturity that one reaches and should always look to keep growing in them by means of looking to Christ as Author and Perfecter of our faith.
I'll be talking about those characteristics very soon in future posts.
Peace to you all.

He fought "The Law" and he won.

Vítor Belfort put a stamp on Matt "The Law" Lindland. It was very impressive to see something that had never happened before. Lindland is the definition of a tough guy. The man is an accomplished Olympic wrestler and a top notch MMA fighter. He has fought the likes of "Rampage" Jackson and Fedor and neither of them could put him to sleep. Vitor did. I am not sure "The phenom" is back yet because, although impressive, it was a very short fight and I wonder how he would deal with Matt's smell, toughness and meanness after the 10th minute. Anyway, congratulations to brother Belfort and the best of luck to brother Lindland as heals up from the fight.
Sokoudju is going to have to figure something out because he doesn't look very dangerous right now. Babalu slowly applied the choke and the "African assassin" did nothing. Inexperience on the ground? Poor conditioning? Can't really tell but he's gotta do something. He has the stars of no less than Team Quest behind him so it shouldn't be hard to figure it out. Barnett is mean! What he did with Gilbert should be against the law. I really liked Minotoro's showing. Hopefully he'll be on the main card next time.
The WEC event was very, very good in my opinion. Little Evil has nothing to be ashamed of. Urijah is a beast and it could have happened to either of them. Now, to me, the star of the night was Jose Aldo. I was impressed. Killer leg kicks reminded me of he "Pitbull".
Anyway, this was a weekend packed with good MMA and the coming one is no different. I'm looking forward to it. In the meantime we'll keep talking about biblical manhood as I have a couple of interesting things coming up.
Until next time.