Fresh impulses

As Daniel reminded me, “There is only one sermon.” I realised during Phil. 1 in CG that the three main wadges of teaching I have been exploring from the last three months are really all the same thing. I wrote the epic Stück almost a month ago, ‘the article of doom’ (privately listed on the blog—please log in to read it!), and there are some themes in there which I pick out in a specific context and want to look at more generally. Also, I’m bothered that all of these ideas have had a minute circulation, and I would like to find an opportunity to dump them on some friends a bit. I’d feel guilty abusing CG BSs on Philippians, but it is the most major NT exposition of emotions along the lines I am thinking on, so some of it is bound to come out eventually.

On the other hand, writing is safe because no-one has to read it, non-confrontational, and the writing is as helpful to me as doing some BSs or talks. At some point though, I would like a chance to present some of it all in person. I have a little list of five articles (long-ish essays). There is only one sermon, but I am reluctant to blob it all into one amorphous mass of sovereignty teaching. I think there are two areas where I particularly want to express some ideas: firstly addressing Sovereignty as something to be grasped. I know a lot of people starting very far back and reluctant to take hold of God’s offer, so this would include the teaching on Joy inwardly, Love in the way we are called to grasp with both hands the hope of a new heart in our dealings with others (as Jessica said today, and I reluctantly concluded last weekend on the train, “Christians really are hypocrites”). Thirdly, Sovereignty as something to be grasped is the big message I keep trying to share with some friends, one in particular, who perhaps are Christians, but express no desire for sanctification.

The second area is the Discipline of Sovereignty; it feels somewhat a different strand of teaching, but somewhat the same. Without knowing who the audience is, I don’t have a clue how I should relate the two areas in exposition. DoS is the thing I have talked about more in the past year, particularly in terms of depression, circumstances (incl. singleness), and so on.

Sorry for a rambling train-of-thought outline of these possible future posts, but the problem is that I don’t really know when or how I’ll be writing this all up. I have a lot of clear and developed thoughts and verses to go through, and in fact really the majority of what I have come up with in 2010/11 has not yet been shared with anyone, so is getting quite polished by now, but I don’t have an idea quite of who or in what contexts I can get it out. On the plus side, although I am extremely embarrassed by picking dating as the subject of last month’s long essay, and still shudder occasionally at the thought of some people reading it, it is against my expectations still up, and I am confident now that I can compress my feelings and thoughts somewhat and make a certain sense of them in a readably-short format, so there is a good chance I’ll write another long essay after the exams.

Update. For those of you at Central tonight [7/5/11], the themes he covered were verging strongly towards point 1 (as Jessica was mentioning on Wednesday). The links between what I am thinking and what Mike Ovey was saying are clear to me, at least. He left us with two questions at the end: 1) How are we most tempted in the area of humility and drawn away from love for others? 2) What can we do about it? I think the DoS together with exercising humility as a body are the main answers to 2. Unsurprising really, given how much §2 from ‘the article’ drew on Phil 1 and 4.