He is there and He hears us

How staggering a thought, that God Almighty should hear our prayers! Eternal life is not the only certainty for the children of God, but the ear of God, too!

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him (1 John 5:13-15).

David Powlison on why you should pray aloud (in the context of child abuse):

Take the phrases you underlined [from Psalms 55-57] and rewrite them, in your words, as a prayer. Now find a place—the woods, your car, your bedroom—where you are comfortable making some noise to God, and say these prayers out loud to him. Remember, you are talking to the Lord who loves you, who hears you, who is going to act to save you, and who will redeem your soul in peace. Praying out loud helps you realize that God is right there, listening to you.

Your prayer brings your real troubles to the one person, the Lord, who is your only hope. Notice how the psalmist repeats himself. He tells God about his troubles in many different ways. He doesn’t mind repeating himself. He is having a living, honest conversation with God. Not a stilted, rote, “saying your prayers” kind of dialogue. When you’re coming out of the darkness of child abuse, it’s important that you keep talking—say it twice, say it ten times, say it every day. Keep crying out to the God you love; the God you need; the God who’s your only hope.

More on praying, praying aloud, and praying from the Word:

A Personal Liturgy of Confession

Should We Really Call It a "Quiet" Time?

A perplexing (and disturbing) response

When I went to 2008 Resolved conference, I was blessed to hear John Piper preach on The Triumph of the Gospel in the New Heavens and the New Earth. This was one of the most comprehensive, weighty, and devastating messages I've heard from Piper. In it, he talks about the horror of sin, the futility of creation, and hope in liberation from this bondage and in our redemption for the spectacular display of the glory of God. It's an excellent sermon - one that surely will, using his metaphor, fill the belly of your boat with ballast, so that you will endure the crashing waves of your life without capsizing and make it safely to the harbor of heaven.

But something else happened during that message, and unfortunately, it wasn't an isolated incident. Piper was discussing the inadequacy of open theism in comforting those who suffer, but his criticism was not met with tears for those who affirm such a pitiable position, but with laughter from the audience.

I know Piper can be unintentionally funny. Listening to him get excited over European water spiders and microscopic diatoms has certainly made me laugh. He has interesting mannerisms - his intensity can look quite animated in the pulpit with his booming voice, intonations, and hand motions. But he is also uniquely earnest and characteristically serious, and I think our culture is so inundated with frivolity that we don't know how to appropriately respond to a weighty subject without somehow trivializing it. The problem is, I expect that with the world, but what about the church?

I'm not writing this as a defense of John Piper per se - I'm concerned with how we personally approach matters that demand solemnity and humility. Praise God that Piper preaches on those matters every week and ponders them deeply throughout each week. I'm grateful he does, but do we come before the Word ready to receive its truths with the same fear and awe? When we think of sin, suffering, death, judgment, eternity ... are we sobered or giggling?

This happened again recently at a conference on counseling. Confessing his personal struggles was met with laughter from the conference attendees, and his trying to be more serious only elicited more laughter. Justin Taylor and Greg Gilbert blogged on that, so you can listen to the audio there. I just hope that when we do hear something like this, we'll be humbled, not amused.

Your Word is sufficient

If you talk to me on a pretty regular basis, then one thing you will find out is that one of my most influential teachers is a man named David Powlison. He is editor for the Journal of Biblical Counseling, a biblical counselor and faculty member at Christian Counseling and Education Foundation (CCEF), and also a professor of practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary. I first found out about him through a message he delivered at the 2005 Desiring God National Conference - "Christ's Grace and Your Sufferings." (I actually posted an excerpt of that message on my blog back in my I-never-write-and-only-quote-others days.)

In his introduction, Powlison spoke of how Christians often know the right answer without truly understanding it because we treat biblical truths like a quick fix. That often times, the richness and fullness of the Word is sapped by a single qualifier: "just," ie, "if you just ... (fill in the blank)." That when we think of the Word as some kind of easy formula, magic bullet, or pat answer with "just", we ignore all the beautiful and detailed contours of the Bible. And then it becomes something overly simplistic, and then we find it unhelpful and irrelevant. How are we to approach the Word and be blessed by this divine gift instead of treating it like some evangelical amulet?

By God's grace, I have always been taught that the Bible is true, authoritative, and sufficient, so I wanted to study it and obey it. But what that actually looked like wasn't always clear to me, and it's in this that Powlison has helped me profoundly. For instance, knowing (and affirming) the doctrine of God's sovereignty is one thing, trusting God when the future looks uncertain and bleak is another. Doing that isn't easy, but it's exactly in those situations when my true beliefs and the limitations of my finiteness are revealed, and I am then forced to wrestle with who God is, why He matters, and who I am in the light of that reality.

It's easy to treat the doctrines of systematic theology (God, man, sin, Christ, salvation) as obscure, abstract, and irrelevant to the daily grind of our lives - but that is far from the truth. God has used Powlison's teachings to show me that these doctrines are the very lens through which I should view life in this world, and why these truths matter more than anything else we could come to know.

I think the best introduction to David Powlison that you can read is a short article titled "Do You See?" I can't find it online except a pretty thorough collection of excerpts on a post from Justin Taylor's blog. I highly recommend that you read it -- and anything else you can find by Powlison.

Drug design

I've been studying the past couple weeks, which is why I haven't posted recently. But here are a couple things that I've studied that I found amazing and exciting:

Zovirax (Acyclovir)
This is an anti-viral drug called Acyclovir that works by inhibiting viral DNA replication. The reason I thought this was so cool was because it exhibits high selectively toward virally-infected cells. How does it do that? You administer the drug in an inactive form called a prodrug, and once the prodrug is phosphorylated by kinase enzymes, it will be converted into its active form. The reason it's selective toward viral cells is because the viral kinase enzyme works 100x faster than our own kinase enzymes, such that only viral cells are activating the drug and not our own cells.

Sinemet (L-DOPA/Carbidopa)
Parkinson's is a neurodegenerative disease in which the motor pathways of the central nervous system are lost and the patient experiences debilitating muscle tremors and is therefore unable to exercise fine muscle control. The loss of these cells results in an insufficient biosynthesis of dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter used in the action of these pathways.

You could try treating this condition by directly adminstering dopamine, but this presents a couple key problems: dopamine cannot cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to get to the brain where it is needed, and administration in high doses causes severe nausea and vomiting. You could then try to administer L-DOPA, a precursor of dopamine that can cross the BBB. Unfortunately, DOPA decarboxylase, the enzyme that converts L-DOPA into dopamine, is present mainly in the peripheral tissues (eg, liver, heart, lungs, kidneys) and not in the brain, so L-DOPA is converted to dopamine before it can even get to the brain, and you still end up with the side effects.

What you can do is administer L-DOPA with a decarboxylase inhibitor known as Carbidopa. Carbidopa cannot cross the BBB, so it remains in the peripheral tissues and only inhibits those peripheral decarboxylase enzymes, leaving L-DOPA to be taken up into the neural tissues and restore motor function back to normal levels.

Pretty neat, huh?

I'm going to try to actually blog this time

I've had this blog for a long time, but I never actually wrote anything. I would just post something I'd read that had encouraged me, but looking back, I wish I had actually written my thoughts in a little more detail. I didn't because I just didn't want to put in the time and effort to write my thoughts down.

Writing is hard for me, but lately, I've been thinking about a lot of things that I want to write about. Most of the time, I don't tell people about my opinions (they've gotten me in trouble in the past), but I'd like an outlet for my thoughts that I hope will challenge, sharpen, and encourage others.

Some "regular" entries I would like to include would be book reviews (and perhaps film, if I see a film I like enough to recommend) and interaction with sermons I listen to. I don't follow that many people (that is, people outside my theological circles), so it's going to be restricted mainly to Grace Church, John Piper, DA Carson, David Powlison, Capitol Hill Baptist Church/9Marks, and occasionally Tim Keller. I also might write some thoughts on politics/economics/public ethics if I feel strongly enough about it, but I don't want that to take too prominent a role here. Also, because I'm not some impersonal theological robot, I think I might post some personal anecdotes for some lighthearted fun here and there.

Some topics I've been mulling over that I'll try to post this fall:

• The Gospel, the Church, evangelism, missions, and social justice
• Piper's preaching on the Gospel of John
• Material possessions
• Proverbs and biblical ethics
  
• Race and missions
• Relationships (all relationships, not just romantic)
• What I appreciate about Grace Church
• My experience as a Calvinist
  

By no means are my thoughts original or profound. They're mainly what I've learned from others and digested over time, but I would appreciate your input and I'm really yearning for some interaction, and yes, that includes disagreement! I hope that my tone is charitable and edifying, and I would appreciate your help in keeping me within those boundaries.

Here's to hoping I actually maintain a blog this time...