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Barnabas Piper's Blog, page 16

June 18, 2024

June 17, 2024

Teach Us To Pray

When I pray, my default mindset is that it is just me talking to God. It is personal and private, like Jesus’s instructions to his disciples from Matthew 6:6 –  “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” Prayer is not performative. It is not to impress people.

I somehow missed that while prayer is not for other people, it is always with other people. While prayer is often private, it is not isolated. Jesus goes on to say, “Pray then like this: ‘Our Father in heaven. . .’” Our Father. So even as we pray on our own, we are connected to every other Jesus follower and member of the family of God. As we pray, we are talking with the Father we all share. In a sense, we pray with every other believer, so we are not alone in our aloneness.

We are not alone in the weight of our confessions and requests. We are not alone in our rejoicing. We are connected through our Father. Every time we pray, we get to experience an aspect of what the Apostle’s Creed calls “the communion of saints.” May this miraculous reality encourage and bolster us in our communion with God and each other.

I originally wrote this post for my church, Immanuel Nashville, in our Daily Pulse email. If you want encouragement from God’s word delivered Monday thru Friday to your inbox, I encourage you to subscribe! 

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Published on June 17, 2024 05:20

June 14, 2024

Kindle Deals for June 14

Some Kindle deals worth your mind and money today:

The Loveliest Place: The Beauty and Glory of the Church by Dustin Benge – $4.74

Spurgeon the Pastor: Recovering a Biblical and Theological Vision for Ministry by Geoffrey Chang – $4.99

Gospelbound: Living with Resolute Hope in an Anxious Age by Collin Hansen & Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra – $1.99

Run: Book One by John Lewis et al

The Powers That Be by David Halberstam – $2.99

Montana: The Biography of Football’s Joe Cool by Keith Dunnavant – $2.99

Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir by Doris Kearns Goodwin – $1.99

MY BOOKS:

The Pastor’s Kid: What It’s Like and How to Help – $2.99

The Curious Christian: How Discovering Wonder Enriches Every Part of Life – $3.99

These links are Amazon affiliate links.

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Published on June 14, 2024 06:10

3 Things I Like This Week – June 14

Each week (give or take one or two here and there) I share three things I like – It could be a book, a movie, a podcast, an album, a photo, an article, a restaurant, a food item, a beverage, or anything else I simply enjoy and think you might too. You can find a whole pile of things, especially books, I like and recommend HERE.

1. Uniball Vision Elite Pens

I hand write all my outlines for articles or books or sermons, and these are the pens I use to do so. Now, some of you pretentious folks will insist that fountain pens are the best. THat’s fine if your pen is a status symbol rather than a writing tool. Others will advocate for the Pilot G-2, which I would simply call “the velcro shoe” of pens. The vision elite is smooth, dries quickly, and is a pleasure to use. It is the Toyota Camry of pens–not the most luxurious but always a great choice.

 

2. The Sandlot

I fell in love with this movie as a 10-year-old little league ball player watching it with my Elliot Park teammates at a season end party. It captures the essence of summer nostalgia with baseball and friendship and lifeguards and fireworks. It represents the summer and the team every ball-playing boy wishes he had and the rivals we all hated. Even the soundtrack is sublime. It is simply the perfect movie of boyhood. For the last twenty years or so I have watched it at least once a year, and it only gets more delightful when one’s children fall in love with it. I adjure you all, make a tradition of it.

 

3. Strikeforce Energy Drink

Now, when you read “energy drink” don’t think Monster or Red Bull or Celsius or whatever other sugar loaded nonsense is getting adolescents through algebra. Strikeforce was designed by special forces operatives to give them clear heads and physical energy without the crash. It comes in pinky finger sized packets of liquid that easily mix in with 16 ounces of water. It even tastes entirely decent. I use it before preaching. I use it to make up for the sleep I’m not getting with an infant in the house. I use it as pre-workout. It is like a little sanctified magic.

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Published on June 14, 2024 04:49

June 13, 2024

June 12, 2024

June 11, 2024

Kindle Deals for June 11

Some Kindle deals worth your mind and money today:

The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando by William Mann – $2.99

Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan by Alan Paul & Andy Alert – $1.99

Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes – $2.99

John le Carré: The Biography by Adam Sisman – $3.99

Black Fortunes: The Story of the First Six African Americans Who Escaped Slavery and Became Millionaires by Shomari Wills – $2.99

Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson by Bruce Conforth – $2.99

MY BOOKS:

The Pastor’s Kid: What It’s Like and How to Help – $2.99

The Curious Christian: How Discovering Wonder Enriches Every Part of Life – $3.99

These links are Amazon affiliate links.

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Published on June 11, 2024 05:40

June 10, 2024

An Urgent Update on Immanuel Nashville

In the summer of 2017 I walked through the doors of Immanuel Church in Nashville for the first time. I was a few months removed from a painful divorce and a few months into searching for a new church home. Both experiences left me exhausted spiritually and emotionally, discouraged, uncertain of my future, and uncomfortable in church. 

I sat in the furthest back corner of the sanctuary that day and did my best to meet nobody (my usual strategy when visiting churches, even now). When the service began, a pastor stood up and welcomed the congregation warmly. Probably phony, I thought. Then he proceeded to say these words: 


To all who are weary and need rest;


To all who mourn and long for comfort;


To all who fail and need strength;


To all who sin and need a savior;


This church opens wide her doors with a welcome from Jesus Christ.


I thought, If only a church actually welcomed people like that, I might find a home. I decided to take what felt like a risk and let the church prove itself to me for better or worse. What I found in the two years following was a place of belonging. It was a place of safety for the weary and broken. Honesty was upheld as a value, speaking the truth about our lives and our spiritual state and our needs. People were treated with the God-given dignity they deserved, even as they were honest about ugliness in their lives. And it all worked because it was done in humility before God and in dependence on Jesus. 

I had found a church home, a place of belonging to the family of God. Out of this belonging God healed and restored me, He gave me strength, He tempered my cynicism, and in the seven years since I have seen him do the same for so many other people. Eventually He even called me to pastoral ministry, so in what to me is the unlikeliest turn of events, I now have the privilege of serving as one of the pastors at Immanuel. 

I love this church. It is a true Jesus-reflecting home to me and also many like me. And its ministry serves many of you through sermons, music, writing, speaking, and friendship. And we yearn to have a home to pass on to the next generations so that the work of Christ can continue in Nashville long after we are gone and forgotten. Immanuel now finds ourself in a unique, pressing, intimidating place of need and opportunity.

Our Need and Opportunity

The property have leased for the last 10+ years, 4301 Charlotte Avenue, is what we consider home. It is where the Lord has fostered and flourished our ministry, where lives have been changed, and where all kinds of people from all over the Nashville area can gather together each week for fellowship and worship. This location has been a church presence on the west side of Nashvhille for over 100 years, and it is now for sale. Our landlord, Rolling Hills Community Church, has accepted an offer of $15.5 million from a third party. Of course, Immanuel is eager to purchase this property that we consider home and are grateful that the terms of our lease include a right of first refusal, allowing us 60 days to make a matching offer (of which we have about 40 remaining). We currently have just over $6 million raised or pledged, so we need to raise another $9-10 million by the end of July. 

Our location on Charlotte Ave, the main artery west out of downtown Nashville, is one of the best street-corners from which to proclaim the gospel of Jesus. It is accessible from all parts of the city and suburbs. There is new residential and business development all around us. There have never been so many people living in the immediate area around this church building, so there has never been more need for a church right on this spot. And in a time of cultural anxiety, loneliness, vitriol, and hurt the very characteristics God has led us deeper into as a church, such a honesty, dignity, safety—the very reality and culture I experienced seven years ago when I came to Immanuel—have never been more urgently needed in the world around us. 

Our Focus 

We have a lot of money to raise and very little time in which to raise it. But that is not our primary aim. We don’t want to take our eyes off Jesus even for a moment. We don’t want money or a building to become the main thing for us as a church. So we’re praying we would so focus on Jesus over the next several weeks that even if we were unable to raise a single dollar, we’d be able to look back and say we’d had the best summer we’ve ever had as a church. 

Over these weeks we’re focusing our attention on Jesus’s letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2-3. We want to hear his voice and grasp his vision for his church. We want to be a lampstand that carries his light and embodies his beauty, energized by knowing he himself is “in the midst of the lampstands” (Rev. 1:13), present and among his people. (You can find these messages here.)

Would You Pray, Share, and Give?

Please pray for us at this consequential moment. 

For God’s provision of the needed finances For our faithfulness and that we wouldn’t lose our focus on Jesus

You can also tune into our 60 Days of Prayer podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

If you are interested in giving, have questions, or simply want to keep abreast of the situation please visit tenthgeneration.org.

And please help us get the word out! We’d love as many people as possible to know about this and to have an opportunity to join and partner with us. Feel free to share videos from the 10th Generation website or any of the updates from Immanuel through the Daily Pulse of Immanuel, our Youtube channel. or Instagram. 

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Published on June 10, 2024 04:54