Archive for the ‘Spiritual Disciplines’ Category

Means of Grace According to Wayne Grudem

Posted: March 27, 2012 in Spiritual Disciplines
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Wayne Grudem defines means of grace within the church as “activities within the fellowship of the church that God uses to give more grace to Christians.” Grudem believes there are also personal means of grace such as personal prayer, worship, Bible study and personal faith. But in chapter 48 of his Systematic Theology, as part of his discussion of the church, he examines the means of grace for believers through the local church.

Is it possible for God to give us spiritual strength and blessing just by attending church?

There are three important distinctions between Protestant and Roman Catholic means of grace. First, the sacraments are the Roman Catholic’s means of grace that merit justification. What Grudem states that the Protestant means of grace are not salvific. The following seven sacraments are means of saving grace for Roman Catholic:

1. Baptism

2. Confirmation

3. Eucharist or the Lord’s supper

4. Penance

5. Extreme unction or last rites for a dying person

6. Holy orders (ordination of priests and deacons)

7. Matrimony

Another difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic means of grace is that Roman Catholic means of saving grace can be administered only by ordained priests while Protestant means of strengthening grace can be administered by all believers through the local church.

A third difference is the necessity of faith on the part of the recipient of strengthening means of grace in Protestant churches whereas no faith is necessary in the Roman Catholic for the recipient to receive saving grace.

The Lutheran Church holds a similar view to the Roman Catholics as seen the Formula of Concord, Epitome, Article II:

“Likewise, we reject and condemn the error of the Enthusiasts who imagine that God draws men to Himself, enlightens them, justifies them and saves them without means, without the hearing of God’s Word and without the use of the Sacraments.”

The following are Grudem’s means of blessing for believers through the local fellowship of believers:

1. Teaching of the Word

2. Baptism

3. The Lord’s Supper

4. Prayer for one another

5. Worship

6. Church Discipline

7. Giving

8. Spiritual gifts

9. Fellowship

10. Evangelism

11. Personal ministry to individuals

The first and most important means of spiritual blessing through the local church is the Teaching of the Word of God. Grudem quotes Isaiah 55:10-11:

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”

The Book of Acts connects the word of God with the growth of the church: “And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied” (Acts 6:7).

As far as the ordinance of baptism, Grudem explains how it is a means of grace: “Since Jesus commanded his church to baptize (Matt. 28:19), we would expect that there would be a measure of blessing connected with baptism, because all obedience to God by Christians brings God’s favor with it.”

At the end of the chapter, Grudem asks Questions for Personal Application. Here a few:

As you look over the list of means of grace, are there some areas in which people are not actually experiencing ‘grace’ or blessing in your own church? What could be done to increase the effectiveness of these weak areas as means of grace in the life of your church? Are there some that have become rather mechanical, and that you are performing only as an outward or physical activity, without any real participation in your heart? What could you do to increase the effectivensess of those means in your life?

As you look over the list of the means of grace again, name one or more in which you could begin to help the church be more effective in bringing blessing to its people.

Worshiping with Mary’s Heart and Serving with Martha’s Hands, Part 2

Posted: February 22, 2012 in Christ, LIfe of Christ, Spiritual Disciplines
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 I. Laboring and Learning Out of Balance (verses 38-40a)

II. Laboring and Learning Out of Balance Result in Complaining (v. 40b)

A. Martha complains about Jesus (v. 40c)

You have to say Martha is no respecter of persons: “Don’t you care, Jesus?” Of course He cares, Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51) to die for the sins of all sinners.

B. Martha criticizes Mary (v. 40d)

After Martha criticizes Jesus, she bosses Mary. Martha not only had her own To Do List, which was like the law of the Medes and Persians that alters not, she had a To Do List for every one else. Have mercy on you if you did not live up to her To Do List for you.

Warren Wiersbe, “If serving Christ makes us difficult to live with or work with, then something is terribly wrong with our service.”

III. Laboring and Learning Out of Balance Corrected (vv. 41-42)

A. Martha is Corrected (v. 41)

1. Martha is corrected for anxiously spending time on the wrong priorities, “You are worried about many things.” Jesus is not rebuking service for Him. In Luke 10:25-29, Jesus asked a seeker, “What is written in the Law?” The seeker answered correctly: “Love God and Love People.”

a. In 10:30-37, Jesus gives an example of loving people in the good Samaritan incident.

b. In 10:38-42, Jesus gives an example of loving God with the Mary and Martha event.

Jesus is correcting service at the expense of worship.

2. Martha is corrected for criticizing Mary for correctly worshipping before service. Martha is so busy trying to run other people’s lives, she is blind to her own faults.

B. Mary is Praised (v. 42)

1. Mary chose “one thing” that was spiritually and eternally important: Time alone with the Word. Mary knows time in the Word is more important than the approval of the Marthas.

In John 12, Mary publically worships Christ, when she pours out a year’s worth of offerings on Jesus. Private worship feeds public worship.

A. W. Tozer: “If you will not worship God seven days a week, you do not worship Him one day a week.”

Geoffery Thomas, a Welsh Baptist, “There is no way that those who neglect secret worship can know communion with God in the public services of the Lord’s Day.”

2. Mary chose the better meal. “Mary has chosen that good part or portion.” While Martha was frantically preparing a meal for the outward man that is perishing, Mary was relaxed enjoying a spiritual meal that was renewing the inward man. Jesus said earlier, “Man does not live by bread alone but by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.”

Mary is calm, focused, relaxed and quiet. I hear someone say, “I wish I could sit at Jesus’ feet like Mary.” We can meet at Jesus’ feet just like Mary by spending serious time in His Word. We don’t know how many times Mary got to sit at Jesus’ feet in His three year public ministry of traveling and preaching. Probably not that many times. We can in essence sit at His feet daily when we open His Word and read, study, and meditate.

C. Martha learns and grows. 

In John 12:1-2, Martha is serving but with a totally different demeanor. She is focused on one thing, calm not worried, relaxed not trouble and quiet not fretting about others.

Apparently, Martha learned that private worship precedes public service. If you worship alone with God you can worship when you work for God.

Old Brother Lawrence who wrote The Practice of the Presence of God said, “If I’m washing dishes I do it to the glory of God and if I pick up a straw from the ground I do it to the glory of God. I’m in communion with God all the time.”

Worshiping with Mary’s Heart and Serving with Martha’s Hands, Part 1

Posted: February 20, 2012 in Christ, LIfe of Christ, Spiritual Disciplines
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An elementary teacher was helping one of her kindergarten students get his cowboy boots on before leaving for home. He had asked her for help and she could see why. Even with her pulling and pushing, the boots just did not want to fit all the way – they seemed too small. She persisted and by the time she got the second boot on, she had worked up a sweat. She almost cried when the little boy said, “These are on the wrong feet.”

You know how boots can sometimes be hard to tell – so she looked closely and sure enough, they were. She tugged and pulled and finally pulled the boots off. She managed to keep her cool as together they worked to get the boots back on the right feet. Finally, just as she was finished, he said, “You know, these aren’t my boots.”

She bit her tongue rather than scream. Once again she struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting boots off his little feet. No sooner had they gotten the boots off, he said, “See, they’re my brother’s boots, but my mom said I could wear ‘em.”

She did not know if she should laugh or cry, but she mustered up what patience she had left to wrestle the boots back on his feet one more time. Finally, she finished. Helping him into his coat, she asked, “Now, where are your gloves?”

He said, “I stuffed ‘em in the toes of my boots.”

In two years, she will be eligible for parole (Stephen Davey’s sermon True Love Part III).

Sometimes our love is tested. In Luke 10:38-42, Mary and Martha, sisters, were getting annoyed with each other, or more accurately Martha was self-righteously ticked with her younger sister, Mary.

Some think this sibling rivalry was the result of a difference of temperaments:

1. Martha was an extrovert, the talker. Mary was the introvert, the thinker.

2. Martha was always busy. Mary was contemplative and analytical.

3. Martha was a Type A with her Things To Do list always in hand. Mary was a Type B, more laid back, always with a book in hand.

4. Martha was the worker. She invites or at least receives Jesus in her home. Mary was the worshipper.

You can see this contrast in personalities again when the two are contrasted at the death of their brother Lazarus in John 11:20-32. When Martha learns Jesus is coming to Bethany, she runs to meet Him while Mary sits and ponders the death of her brother.

The conflict between these two sisters, however, is much more than a clash of personalities. Mary was balanced in her service and worship of God. Martha was not.

First of all in this next event in the Life of Christ we see

I. Laboring and Learning Out of Balance (verses 38-40a)

A. Martha is frantically laboring to prepare a meal for Jesus (v. 38)

When Martha learns that Jesus is coming for dinner, she downs a Five Hour Energy drink and tops it with a Red Bull. She goes into command mode barking orders. She dispatches a servant to the market to purchase the freshest meat and veggies. She Spring cleans her house in a matter of minutes. Martha is the Queen of Multi-tasking. Just as soon as the servant returns she starts chopping food while micromanaging every one else in the house.

Jesus shows up early, about halfway through the preparations, which only added more pressure.

I read that at one time in our nation Americans bought more tonnage of aspirin for headaches than fertilizer. Not more in price but tonnage of aspirin for headaches that in most cases are stress related and not physically caused.

Jim Elliot, modern martyred missionary, said, “I think the devil has made it his business to monopolize on three elements: noise, hurry, crowds…. Satan is quite aware of the power of silence” (Donald S. Whitney. Spiritual Disciplines For The Christian Life, Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1991, 187).

B. Mary who was helping in the kitchen goes and sits at Jesus’ feet (v. 39)

Mary was ready to get out of the same kitchen Martha Stewart was in.

To sit at Jesus’ feet was an official position of a student. Pupils did not enroll in colleges and universities, they hired tutors. In Acts 22:3, Paul’s parents employed the most famous of Jewish rabbis, Gamaliel. Mary was honored to be among a select few to have Jesus as her teacher. Three times Mary is seen at Jesus’ feet (Mark Driscoll’s sermon).

Mary was a serious student at the feet of Jesus’ feet learning His Word and her life reflected it.

Some call this spiritual exercise the Spiritual Discipline of Silence and Solitude. There is virtually a Who’s Who List of Men and Women of God in Church history who valued their time alone with God’s Word:

David Branerd, American missionary to native Americans, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon who said, “I commend solitude.” J. Hudson Taylor, Jim Elliot, A. W. Tozer, the great devotional writher, who recommended, “Retire from the world each day to some private spot, even if it be only the bedroom (for a while I retreated to the furnace room for want of a better place). Susanna Wesley, mother of John and Charles, had a very large family of 19 children and for many years times of physical isolation were scarce. It is well known that when she needed silence and solitude she would bring her apron up over her head and read her Bible and pray underneath it. Obviously that did not block out all noise, but it was a sign to her children that for those minutes she was not to be bothered and the older ones were to care for the younger” (Whitney, 189).

C. Martha was distracted in her busyness (v. 40a)

Martha was so busy serving Jesus she neglected Jesus. Martha could have prepared a much simpler meal and joined Mary at Jesus’ feet. This is what the writer of Proverbs recommended: Proverbs 15:16, “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.” It is better to have a vegetable plate with less stress in preparation than a seven course meal that took half a day to prepare resulting in everyone mad because of all the pressure.

In Part 2, we will consider the results and the correction of laboring and learning out of balance.


A Hot Cup of Tea and Meditation

Posted: February 15, 2012 in Spiritual Disciplines
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Here are some more old and new thoughts on meditation as I have continued to think on this subject.

Donald S. Whitney uses the analogy of preparing a hot cup of tea to illustrate meditation:

You are the cup of hot water and the intake of Scripture is represented by the tea bag. Hearing God’s Word is like one dip of the tea bag into the cup. Some of the tea’s flavor is absorbed by the water, but not as much as would occur with a more thorough soaking of the bag. In this analogy reading, studying, and memorizing God’s Word are represented by additional plunges of the tea bag into the cup. The more frequently the tea enters the water, the more effect it has. Meditation, however, is like immersing the bag completely and letting it steep until all the rich tea flavor has been extracted and the hot water is thoroughly tinctured reddish brown (Spiritual Disciplines For The Christian Life, Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1991, 44).

Meditation is a Spiritual Discipline which is a means or habit or discipline that promotes spiritual growth. Paul commands us to practice Spiritual Disciplines in 1 Timothy 4:7: “exercise or discipline yourself rather unto godliness.” Spiritual Discplines like physical workouts require discipline which yields the person the eternal result of godliness. There is a vital connection between hearing, reading, studying, memorizing, meditating on the Word of God and prayer.

1. The Word Feeds our Meditation

Meditation takes place after we have heard, read, studied, and memorized God’s  Word. Many of the Biblical references to meditation refer to meditating day and night or all the day (Joshua 1:8; Psalm 1:2; Psalm 119:97). So while reading, studying, and hearing the Word may occur at one sitting, meditating takes place around the clock as we have the opportunity to reflect on what we have read, studied and heard. So the intake of God’s Word feeds our ability to meditate.

2. Meditation Feeds our Prayers

Prayer is another means of grace in our lives according to Hebrews 4:16 where God’s throne, which we approach through prayer, is call a “throne of grace.” Daniel exercised this Spiritual Discipline three times a day in Daniel 6:11.

The meditation of the Word is like eating a healthy meal, which gives us energy to exercise ourselves in prayer unto godliness. Thomas Manton wrote: “The word feeds meditation and meditation feeds prayer. What we take in by the word we digest by meditation and let out by prayer” (The Works of Thomas Manton, reprint, Worthington, PA: Maranatha Publications, n.d., 272-273).

Daniel was reading, studying, and meditating on the prophecy of the 70 year Babylonian Captivity in Jeremiah 25:11-12 when he realized he was in the midst of it’s fulfillment. This mediation on God’s Word and God’s faithfulness drove him to pray one of the most powerful prayers in all of Scripture in Daniel 9:1-19.

One on my favorite Psalms is Psalm 103 which is a Praise Psalm. In this Praise Psalm, David praises God for what He has done and who He is. Sometimes at night I join David in praising God. I simply work my way through the Psalm praising Him for His works in 103:1-5 (His forgivness, healing, deliverance, and spiritual satisfaction) and for His attributes in 103:6-22 (His holiness, justice, mercy, eternality, and  sovereignty). When I remember what God said through Asaph, praising God becomes an act of worship: “Whoso offers praise glorifies me” (Psalm 50:23). It was the mediation of God’s Word, however, that led to prayer and praise that enabled me to bring glory and delight to God.

Meditation: The Secret of Jonathan Edwards’ Influence

Posted: February 10, 2012 in Spiritual Disciplines
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It is easy for us who are bombarded with information not to meditate or process all the input to which we are exposed. We are inundated with news from our car radios, emails at work, texts and tweets from friends, web-site surfing, and podcasts and TV in the evenings.  And don’t forget all the cell phones calls each day.

Donald S. Whitney in his Spiritual Disciplines For The Christian Life contrasts our 21st century media saturated lifestyle to the 18th century theologian Jonathan Edwards. “I’m told that due to the information explosion, which doubles the total sum of human knowledge every few years, we’ve now reached a point where the average weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than Jonathan Edwards would have encountered in his entire eighteenth-century lifetime” (page 46). This prolific writer did not have the distractions with which we battle. Granted the fact he was a disciplined genius did not hurt.

How can we overcome the endless competitors for our time and attention and grow in the grace and knowledge of God’s Word? Meditation!

Whitney defines meditation as “deep thinking on the truths and spiritual realities revealed in Scripture for the purposes of understanding, application, and prayer” (page 44).

Whitney gives an analogy of a cup of tea. In the analogy you are the hot cup of water and the Word of God is the tea bag. “Hearing God’s Word is like one dip of the tea bag into the cup. Some of the tea’s flavor is absorbed by the water, but not as much as would occur with a more thorough soaking of the bag. In this analogy, reading, studying, and memorizing God’s Word are represented by additional plunges of the tea bag into the cup. The more frequently the tea enters the water, the more effect it has. Meditation, however, is like immersing the bag completely and letting it steep until all the rich tea flavor has been extracted and the hot water is thoroughly tinctured reddish brown” (page 44).

Success in the Bible is only promised in relationship to the Bible and specifically in regard to meditating on God’s Word (Psalm 1:1-3; Joshua 1:8).

Even Edwards had to discipline himself to use his time wisely in order to meditate on God’s Word. Whitney related the following example: When he was younger, Edwards had pondered how to make use of the time he had to spend on journeys (on horse back). After the move to Northampton he worked out a plan for pinning a small piece of paper to a given spot on his coat, assigning the paper a number and charging his mind to associate a subject with that piece of paper. After a ride as long as the three-day return from Boston he would be bristling with papers. Back in his study, he would take off the papers methodically, and write down the train of thought each slip recalled to him (page 48).

It is not enough to memorize God’s Word. Atheists and parrots memorize the Bible. Meditation equips us to apply God’s Word.

Just as meditating should take place after hearing, reading, studying, and memorizing God’s Word, prayer should be the practical application of meditation. Thomas Manton wrote of this process: “The word feeds meditation and meditation feeds prayer” (The Works of Thomas Manton, pages 272-273).

Daniel was meditating on Jeremiah 25 as Daniel 9:1-2 records. When he understood the significance of the passage he set his face “unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fastings, and sackcloth and ashes.” Meditation fed one of the most remarkable prayers in God’s Word.

David also benefited from his meditation which led to this outburst of praise: “O how love I your law! It is my meditation all the day. You through your commandments have made me wiser than mine enemies: for they are ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers: for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients, because I keep you precepts” (Psalm 119:97-100).

As a result of his recorded meditations, Edwards being dead yet speaks and impacts our lives.  If we would commit ourselves to this lost art of concentration we also could be used of God to be agents of change.

We have many Marthas, but where are the Marys?

Posted: February 7, 2012 in Book Reviews, Spiritual Disciplines
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B. B. Warfield warned busy theological students in his The Religious Life of a Theological Student, “There is no mistake more terrible than to suppose that activity in Christian work can take the place of depth of Christian affections” (The Religious Life of a Theological Student /The Master’s Perspective on Pastoral Ministry, page 27).

“Activity, of course, is good: Surely in the cause of the Lord we should run and not be weary. But not when it is substituted for inner religious strength.”

Warfield uses the examples of Martha frantically scurrying about in contrast with meditative Mary worshiping at Jesus’ feet. “We cannot get along without our Marthas. But what shall we do when, through all the length and breath of the land, we shall search in vain for a Mary?”

“A minister, high in the esteem of the churches, is even quoted as declaring—-not confessing, mind you, but publishing abroad as something in which he gloried—that he has long ceased to pray: He works. ‘Work and pray’ is no longer, it seems, to be the motto of at least ministerial life. It is to be all work and no praying.”

With these comments Warfield adds what is also necessary to the religious life of the theological student. In addition to his study of theology as in the presence of God and corporate worship with God’s people (See Review of The Religious Life of the Theological Student, Part 1), there must also be “your private religious exercises….you must keep the fires of religious life burning brightly in your heart.” We must convert our theological study hall into a worship center. We also need to move from privately worshiping God in our prayer closet to assembling with God’s people in our public sanctuaries. All three spiritual disciplines are important.

Why are these spiritual disciplines necessary? They are imperative for two reasons: “The immensity of the task before you, the infinitude of the resources at your disposal.” Warfield accurately concludes that both of these realities will “throw us back upon our knees.” Both the difficulty of the task of fulfilling the Great Commission of making disciples and the resources of God’s Word and God’s Spirit will cause us to pray.

We cannot in our strength transform Sauls of Tarsus into Apostle Pauls. So we collapse to our knees and cry out to God “who is sufficient for these things” (2 Corinthians 2:17). But when we comprehend the greatness of God’s all sufficient grace, we again from our knees exult “our sufficiency is of God” (2 Corinthians 3:5).

Men of God rise up and fall to your knees.

Review: The Religious Life of Theological Students by Benjamin B. Warfield, Part 1

Posted: February 4, 2012 in Book Reviews, Spiritual Disciplines
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Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (1851-1921) was professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1887-1921.  Warfield is considered the last of the great Princeton theologians before the split in 1929 that formed Westminster Seminary under the leadership of J. Gresham Machen.

I am reviewing a message he delivered to pastoral students at the Autumn Conference of Princeton Theological Seminary on October 4, 1911.

Warfield began his sermon: “A minister must be both learned and religious (by religious Warfield meant godly). It is not a matter of choosing between the two. He must study, but he must study as in the presence of God and not in a secular spirit. He must recognize the privilege of pursuing his studies in the environment where God and salvation from sin are the air he breathes.” Oh that all of our students of the Word, whether students in preparation or pastors who are still students, had this appreciation.

The theological student is training to be “apt to teach.” This requires learning. But this is only one on a long list of requirements. He must also be godly.

There should be no antithesis between being able to teach and being godly. Warfield quotes someone who said, “Ten minutes on your knees will give you a truer, deeper, more operative knowledge of God than ten hours over your books. What! is the appropriate response? Why should you turn from God when you turn to your books, or feel that you must turn from your books in order to turn to God?”

May God help us to emulate Moses before the burning bush. When we are before our theology book opened to the Trinity, by the way it was Christ as the Angel of the Lord in the burning bush, we should feel like taking off our shoes for we are on holy ground adoring our majestic God.

The theological student will study if he is truly religious. But it is possible to study theology in “an entirely secular spirit.” If he does he is “irreligious or unreligious.”  The study of theology unlike any other discipline brings us into the very presence of God and is a “religious exercise.”

Warfield warns theological students of the danger of constant contact with divine things. They can become like the Old Testament priests who handled and moved the Tabernacle furniture, around which God manifested His glory, as just earthly materials. If our study of theology has become commonplace then we have become “weary of God.”

The Word of God is not a worker’s manual with which we are skilled technicians. Paul called what he preached “the Word of His grace which is able to build you up” (Acts 20:32). The Word is a means of God ministering His all sufficient grace.

If our theological studies is not causing us to grow in holiness then we are hardening. Our study of theology should be a “religious exercise out of which you draw every day enlargement of heart, elevation of spirit, and adorning delight in your Maker and your Savior.”

The study of theology alone, however, is not sufficient for the theological student. He must attend public worship “which cannot be neglected without the gravest damage to your religious life.” We must go from our private places of nourishment and bring our devotion to God to His public worship with our community.

“The apostolic writer couples together the exhortations to ‘hold fast the confession of our hope, that it waver not,’ and to forsake not ‘the assembling of ourselves together (Hebrews 10:23-25).’”

Warfield believed that theological students should come together each morning and evening for prayer and twice on Sundays for formal worship to maintain their “religious quickening and growth.” To the student who complains about these too numerous meeting, Warfield would say you, “betray the low ebb of your own religious vitality.”

For the theological student “who thinks the preaching at the regular services on Sunday morning dull and uninteresting” Warfield advised: “The preaching you find dull will no more seem dull to you if you faithfully obey the Master’s precept: ‘Take heed what you hear.’ If there is no fire in the pulpit it falls to you to kindle it in the pews. No man can fail to meet with God in the sanctuary if he takes God there with him.”

Warfield gave one more twist to the implanted dagger in those who complain about their preacher: “Men who are hungry for the truth and get it ought not to be exigent as to the platter in which it is served to them. And they will not be.”

Warfield reminds us that Jesus regularly met to worship with God’s people “as his custom was” (Luke 4:16). “We cannot afford to be wiser than our Lord in this matter….He was found in the place of worship, side by side with God’s people, not for the mere sake of setting a good example, but for deeper reasons.”

These religious exercises are necessary for student preachers if they would be as Cotton Mather subtitled a book for ministerial students: “The angels preparing to sound the trumpets.” Warfield concluded his sermon: “That is what Cotton Mather calls you, students for the ministry: the angels, preparing to sound the trumpets! Take the name to yourselves, and live up to it. Give your days and nights to living up to it! And then, perhaps, whey you come to sound the trumpets the note will be pure and clear and strong, and perchance may pierce even to the grave and wake the dead.”

If you are a student preparing for the pastorate or a pastor who takes his call seriously, Warfield summons us to not separate our study of God’s Word from our worship of God. When we leave our study to fill the pulpit may we like Moses descend with the evident glory of God on our exposition.

Part 2 will be entitled “There are many Marthas, but where are the Marys?”