A sad decision.

The full statement:

Statement from Susan G. Komen Board of Directors and Founder and CEO Nancy G. Brinker

We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.

The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.

It is our hope and we believe it is time for everyone involved to pause, slow down and reflect on how grants can most effectively and directly be administered without controversies that hurt the cause of women. We urge everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue. We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics – anyone’s politics.

Starting this afternoon, we will have calls with our network and key supporters to refocus our attention on our mission and get back to doing our work. We ask for the public’s understanding and patience as we gather our Komen affiliates from around the country to determine how to move forward in the best interests of the women and people we serve.

We extend our deepest thanks for the outpouring of support we have received from so many in the past few days and we sincerely hope that these changes will be welcomed by those who have expressed their concern.

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When I went to sleep last night, I had no idea that today would be the day that my eyes would be this enlightened and my heart so burdened. You see, this morning my phone starting blowing up at 5:00am with people checking on me. My family was fine, our house was fine, we had no idea what had taken place the hours prior to that call.

I really did not realize how bad everything was until I started trying to call people without any answers. I became concerned, and then I received a call that dear friends of mine had lost everything. They were very scratched up from their house caving in on them in the basement and trying to climb out. As soon as my children were dropped off at school, I headed to their neighborhood in Trussville to lend an extra hand, pray for them, and drive them wherever they might need to go.

I had a lot of difficulty getting to my friends, ended up leaving my car on the side of the road, riding with them a little ways, then walking toward their home. We searched for a purse and phones and finally decided to take my friend to a doctor to check her back. I drove her to the doctor, to Wendy’s for a burger, to a friend’s home to get some clothes, to Target for shoes and sunglasses, and to AT&T for a cell phone.

I didn’t realize how lost you are without a phone—no real contact with anyone to let them know you are alive or you need help. Then, we once again went to the rubble and tried to pull stuff out. We were finding mismatch shoes, some books, some pictures, a spoon, a necklace, an earring, and in between we would tell a joke or two to just try to keep from losing all emotions.

I had no words a lot of the time, which is very unlike me. I knew that I had to just pray for those I did not know where hurting, were searching through rubble, whom no longer had a home. See, around 2:00 this afternoon, I learned another couple from our church that I have grown to love so much had lost everything. They have an infant son as well. So with each item, I was lost in emotion, sadness, and awe.

Then, driving home, God reminded me of his amazing strength that is bigger than any tornado. His love is bigger than any strong wind that may come our way. His sovereignty and grace is above all human power or emotion. Our God is GREAT! And in His greatness there is a time for everything under heaven.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-22 (ESV) says:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

9 What gain has the worker from his toil? 10 I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 12 I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; 13 also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man. 14 I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. 15 That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away. 

16 Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. 17 I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work. 18 I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. 19 For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. 20 All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. 21 Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? 22 So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?

We will never know what God plans from beginning to end, nor should we try to know.

But this I know for sure:

There is a time for the house to break down, and a time to build up.

A time to weep what is lost, and to laugh at what is found.

A time to mourn what has happened, and to dance at what is to come.

A time to seek, and a time to just say it’s gone.

A time to keep, and a time to just give away.

A time to speak and a time to be silent with a loss for words.

A time to tear down, and a time to sew the new.

A time to love those around you and to seek peace.

We don’t know the mind of Christ, or any need to understand what has happened. But we must be joyful in the lives spared and do good as long as we live.

It is time to do good, to help those rebuild, and take pleasure in the toil that God has sat before us. God has given us a tornado as an opportunity to show those around us how much we love them with the love of Christ. And no job is too little or too much!

Work for the Lord. “There is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work,” we know not what is after us or when you will need the help.

Dear God,

Thank you for being God. Thank you for sparing lives and homes. Thank you for allowing us to help those who need us to help search through rubble, drive to the store, provide water, and provide shelter, socks, and underwear. Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to be busy serving your people and loving people with the love of Christ. I am so thankful for the day I spent with my dear friends and I pray that you will allow them the strength to endure this storm with you as their guide and friends at their service. I will never understand your ways, but am glad I was able to be a vessel of service today. I am so thankful for your immeasurable love for me and blessings you give my immediate family, my church family, and close friends. I love you!

Your daughter,

Beth

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Thankfully everything was ok for Beth and the boys, though some were not so lucky. Beth and I have some great friends, and they did a great job looking out for her and the boys. When I got back in town and we had no power still, some of them even insisted we stay with them until all was back to normal.

Then it happened again.

This morning.

This time I was in Nashville getting ready for work when my twitter feed blew up. It’s an eerie feeling not being able to reach your wife via phone or text when you know she could be in danger. Eventually, we got connected. Again, we dodged the storm. Guess it says something for our side of town (at the risk of sounding crass, I can’t help but mention that our house is for sale on the east side of Birmingham). We did have some tornadoes in our area back in April, but this morning they affected the area where many of our friends live on the north side of Trussville.

Below are our friends Ken and Kim Horton in front of what remains of their house  Beth went over and saw them this morning. They were trapped in the basement, but thankfully made it out alive. They lived in a neighborhood in Trussville right off Deerfoot Parkway, just one exit up from our church, CrossPoint. The pics are heart-wrenching.

For those wishing to help with disaster relief, CrossPoint Church (8000 Liles Lane, Trussville, AL) is accepting bottled water, new socks, and new underwear at the church office. Please, no used clothes at this time. If you’d like to coordinate with disaster relief teams, please contact Brian Harris or Steve Parr at the church office – 205-655-0364.

Some other random pics from the area that I’ve seen posted by friends. Heartbreaking all of them.

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My favorite verse is the second. It’s a great reminder of why we should be thankful and a great encouragement to never be complacent in our Christian walk. Alford sums up our need for sanctification in the last line of the second stanza. May we always continue to strive for purity in our lives.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Come, ye thankful people, come,
Raise the song of harvest home!
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin;
God, our Maker, doth provide
For our wants to be supplied;
Come to God’s own temple, come;
Raise the song of harvest home!

We ourselves are God’s own field,
Fruit unto his praise to yield;
Wheat and tares together sown
Unto joy or sorrow grown;
First the blade and then the ear,
Then the full corn shall appear;
Grant, O harvest Lord, that we
Wholesome grain and pure may be.

For the Lord our God shall come,
And shall take the harvest home;
From His field shall in that day
All offences purge away,
Giving angels charge at last
In the fire the tares to cast;
But the fruitful ears to store
In the garner evermore.

Then, thou Church triumphant come,
Raise the song of harvest home!
All be safely gathered in,
Free from sorrow, free from sin,
There, forever purified,
In God’s garner to abide;
Come, ten thousand angels, come,
Raise the glorious harvest home!

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I realize this news comes as a shock to many of our friends here in Birmingham and at CrossPoint. So here’s the details:

As many of you know, I have worked for the past few years in the Christian publishing industry. Through my work, I’ve dealt with a variety of people at LifeWay Christian Resources. Little did I know that I would eventually join them in their efforts. LifeWay is one of the largest curriculum providers in the US as well as one of the largest retail chains. It’s a fantastic company with competent, godly leaders with whom I will have the pleasure of working.

In my new role, I will be aiding with social media production and preparation for the executive leadership team at LifeWay. My work will mostly revolve around content planning and preparation for Thom Rainer, president of the company, and Ed Stetzer, one of the many vice presidents.

These two men are titans of their industry. Not just in the business side, but as thought leaders as well. Dr. Stetzer is one of the leading figures in missiology and church planting, and Dr. Rainer has—probably more than anyone in this generation—shaped how local churches operate and how they are structured.

They are well-respected, godly men. And I am now privileged to work with them and learn from them on a daily basis.

As for leaving Birmingham, and more specifically our friends at Crosspoint:

We will miss you dearly.

You have become a family to us.

I cannot thank the teachers and leaders at CrossPoint enough for your support of my wife as she has served at CrossPoint.

Ethan and Parker’s Sunday school teachers, VBS teachers, and anyone who has had them in childcare: You have taught my boys well the ways of the Lord. We thank you for your service and your commitment to further the Kingdom of God.

I will miss much about CrossPoint. It is truly a choice church with a choice pastor. Ryan has become one of my closest friends. He trusted me with his blog a few years ago. I knew very little about websites and social media at that time. Without that one opportunity, I wouldn’t have had the experience or the know-how for this new journey. So, Ryan, if you’re still looking for someone to blame, find a mirror.

There are too many things about CrossPoint that we will miss for me to make a complete list, but here are a few:

• godly men who serve their pastor by praying for him and interceding while he preaches
• ushers and deacons with servant hearts on whom I can count to hand me my worship guide at a specific door each week
• knowing who will collect my offering every week – same person for the past 2 years…every week
• seeing children of friends come to Christ and be baptized
• learning theology, biblical history, and hermeneutics every week from the pulpit without everyone realizing it is happening—Whitley is sneaky that way
• seeing a church take membership and membership renewal seriously
• all 14,689 t-shirts I’ve gotten in the past 4 1/2 years
• last but not least, John Coon’s barbecue

CrossPoint, you have a great staff and will continue to have a great one even after your best staff member leaves (I am biased). They love God, they faithfully serve God’s people, and the passionately carry out God’s mission. You can’t ask for anything more than that out of a staff.

Again, I will miss CrossPoint dearly.

However, I can’t wait to see what God has in store for me, Beth, Parker, and Ethan in Nashville.

Soli Deo Gloria

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Like many up to that point, I had never heard of Gungor. But when my twitter feed literally filled up with tweets related to their performance, I knew I needed to check them out. I listened to one song, and I was hooked.

Their acoustic, folksy sound really appeals to me and their debut album Beautiful Things is one of the most unique and inspiring collections of music I have heard in sometime.

So earlier this summer, when I heard there was a new album—Ghosts Upon the Earth—coming, I set a reminder for September 20.

Ironically, I just happened to have a 3-hour drive to Nashville today. Needless to say, I has some pretty sweet driving music on my way to the Music City. In summary, the new album is unique, inventive, and majestic. I highly recommend it. You can get Ghosts Upon the Earth at Amazon here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGtvtLDicwA

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I attended the NNS race on Saturday at Talladega as well as the ARCA race that morning. It was very interesting to take in both the pack-style and tandem-style racing within a few hours.

On one hand, the pack style (ARCA race) made it easier for me to follow what was happening. There was one pack of racing to watch. You could see what was happening for almost everyone involved. Probably a lot easier on TV folks as well. The biggest drawback was a lack of passing. It took a lot to pass and move up in the field.

On the other hand, it was really great to watch a tandem (NNS race) get hooked up and move to the front. Action was all over the track and passing was easy and frequent. That was the real “high-speed chess match” that we hear so much about. The biggest drawback was that at a 2.66 mile track, things got really spread out, and it’s got to be a beast for TV to cover.

I guess the biggest issue here is “what do the fans want?”.

They got 88 lead changes among 26 drivers on Sunday. But the first 177 laps were largely seen as “boring” by most accounts. I had no problem with the race. I think that’s a lot better alternative than the possible 43-car train riding around the top groove to click off laps.

I think it really has to do with perception from the “traditionalists”. The same ones who rake NASCAR over the coals for moving the Southern 500 from Labor Day and taking races away from North Wilkesboro.

I’m new to NASCAR having only been following the sport heavily since the 2007 Daytona 500. I see no problem with the new car, I didn’t care about the wing, and I have no issue with fuel injection coming to the sport. I’m the “new fan”. I also understand the importance of races in larger DMA’s and larger seating capacities.

All that to say, no matter what happens with the plate racing (or any other decisions the governing body makes) some people will be upset. I do not envy your position. The easy fix is to just make the bumpers not line up on the new car in 2013 or make a change to the current car this offseason or before the Coke Zero 400.

No matter what you decide, please know that not all the fans hate the tandem racing. I’m fine either way. The racing I despise is the strung out stuff on the intermediate tracks when nothing happens for 40 laps or more (or at least when TV makes it feel like that).

Thanks for all you do to further the sport. Good luck with what I know will be some tough decisions in the coming days and weeks.

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First of all, John Piper’s book A Sweet and Bitter Providence is one of the best out there on the subject.

The book of Ruth aims to show that all of history, even its darkest hours, serves to magnify the glory of God’s grace. In surprising ways, a thousand years before Christ, this book glorifies his saving work on the cross, as we will see. Ruth is about the work of God in the darkest of times to prepare the world for the glories of Jesus Christ. (p. 16)

Piper does a fantastic job of unveiling the Christocentricity of Ruth throughout the book. Many times, we read an Old Testament book and come away without realizing the ties to Christ’s redemptive work on the Cross that the book contains. Piper does not make this mistake.

The story of Ruth, at one level, is about God’s sweet and bitter providences. He governs the famine, and the marriage of Naomi’s sons to foreign women, and the death of her sons, and the faithfulness of Ruth, and the availability and nobility of Boaz, and the birth of a child to preserve the line of Elimelech. The story shows that God is at work in the darkest of times for the good of his people. The life of believers is not a straight path to glory, but they do get there.

But at another level, the story is about something much larger than one family and their sorrows and joys. It is about God’s plan to glorify his grace in the Son of David, the Messiah, the Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Ruth and Naomi and Boaz are caught up in something of eternal significance. Glory is not too big a word for the destinies implicit in this story.

The application of this glory to us may be felt most personally when we focus on Ruth herself. How are we included? All the calamities of this story seem to be designed to get a Moabitess into the genealogy of Jesus. Ruth is one of the four women mentioned in Matthew’s genealogy (Matthew 1:5). God pursued her. He turned the world upside down, you might say, to include Ruth in the lineage of his Son.

Surely this is significant for us. Does it not mean that God’s blessings are free and undeserved? Ruth was an idolatrous Moabitess before God pursued her (1:15). She did not merit this pursuit. It was free. That is the way God pursues you and me. “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16).

Not only that, but God moved the world in order to include a foreigner in the lineage of the Messiah. Ruth was not a Jew. Is not God showing us that his heart is for the nations—all the nations? The glory of Christ is that he comes from the nations and dies for the nations. His blood was shed for the nations, and the nations’ blood ran in his veins. The Jewish high priest prophesied better than he knew in John 11:51–52 “that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.” “You were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9).

The redeeming work of Christ is free and undeserved. It is intended for every ethnic group on the planet. All ethnocentric and racist impulses are crucified in Christ. That too is what the story of Ruth is about. (p. 111-113)

You can pick up the book from Amazon here.

The other resource is a sermon series David Platt preached on the book of Ruth back in 2009. I’m guessing he leaned heavily on Piper’s book, and it is a great listen. You can find it here.

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• Colossians 1:1-8 | Jim Shaddix – Audio
• Colossians 1:9-14 | Russell Moore – Audio
• Colossians 1:15-23 | JD Greear – Audio
• Colossians 1:24-2:5 | Tony Merida – Audio
• Panel Discussion Q&A | Merida, Jones, Greear, Moore, Shaddix – Audio
• Colossians 2:6-15 | Jim Shaddix – Audio
• Colossians 2:16-23 | Russell Moore – Audio
• Colossians 3:1-11 | Tyler Jones – Audio
• Colossians 3:12-17 | Eric Mason – Audio
• Colossians 3:18-4:1 | Chuck Quarles – Audio
• Colossians 4:2-6 | Fred Luter – Audio
• Global Missions | David Platt – Audio

Via - AdvanceTheChurch.com

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via The Gospel Coalition:

How Do God’s Love and God’s Wrath Relate?

One evangelical cliché has it that God hates the sin but loves the sinner.

There is a small element of truth in these words: God has nothing but hate for the sin, but this cannot be said with respect to how God sees the sinner.

Nevertheless the cliché is false on the face of it, and should be abandoned. Fourteen times in the first fifty psalms alone, the psalmists state that God hates the sinner, that His wrath is on the liar, and so forth. In the Bible the wrath of God rests on both the sin (Rom. 1:18–23) and the sinner (1:24–32; 2:5; John 3:36).

Our problem in part is that in human experience wrath and love normally abide in mutually exclusive compartments. Love drives wrath out, or wrath drives love out. We come closest to bringing them together, perhaps, in our responses to a wayward act by one of our children, but normally we do not think that a wrathful person is loving.

But this is not the way it is with God. God’s wrath is not an implacable blind rage. However emotional it may be, it is an entirely reasonable and willed response to offenses against His holiness. At the same time His love wells up amidst His perfections and is not generated by the loveliness of the loved. Thus there is nothing intrinsically impossible about wrath and love being directed toward the same individual or people at once. God in His perfections must be wrathful against His rebel image-bearers, for they have offended Him; God in His perfections must be loving toward His rebel image-bearers, for He is that kind of God. . . .

The reality is that the Old Testament displays the grace and love of God in experience and types, and these realities become all the clearer in the New Testament. Similarly, the Old Testament displays the righteous wrath of God in experience and types, and these realities become all the clearer in the New Testament. In other words both God’s love and God’s wrath are ratcheted up in the move from the Old Testament to the New. These themes barrel along through redemptive history, unresolved, until they come to a resounding climax in the Cross.

Do you wish to see God’s love? Look at the Cross.

Do you wish to see God’s wrath? Look at the Cross.

—From D.A. Carson, “God’s Love and God’s Wrath,” Bibliotheca Sacra 156 (1999): 388–390.

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