Revenge by Jon Foreman – The Theif on the Cross

I’m the failure
I’m everyone’s fool
And I’m losing my cool at the end

I’m the loser
My number’s come up
I’ve been hung up with thoughts of
Revenge,
Revenge,
Revenge

I watched you
From my terminal view
As you struggled to rise to your end

I laughed hard
At the insults we threw
As the weight of the world found
Revenge

The world hung upside down
I drew first blood
I drew first blood
With my hate for a crown
I drew first blood
I drew first blood
Revenge

I watched heaven
Dying today
And I’m gonna die here tonight

I’m a villain
I deserve to be dead
I’ve been hung up for
Wreckin’ my life
Revenge

So I stopped for a moment
To look at the sun
Dying a day

That’s when the irony hit me
That this was revenge
Love had descended
And stolen our pain
Away

We consumed heaven’s Son
I drew first blood
I drew first blood
My hate was undone
I drew first blood
I drew first blood
Revenge

Here’s a story
How a thief had been robbed
How a murder had stolen my rage

Think of me, Lord
I’m a few breaths away
As my lungs finally rip from the
Cage…
Revenge

Apple Pie – John Piper Quote

“The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of the triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.”

-John Piper, Hunger for God p. 14

Theology, Wonder, and Conversion – Quote from John Saward

“Theological mysteries are truth and therefore light for the mind, but the truth is so vast, the light of such intensity, that the mind is dazzled and amazed.  When a man meets a mystery of the faith, he finds not a deficiency but an excess of intelligibility: there is just too much to understand.  Reverence for supernaturally revealed mystery is therefore not reason’s abdication, but reason’s recognition, through faith, of a grandeur transcending its powers.  ‘If it searches diligently, piously, and soberly,’ say the Fathers of the First Vatican Council, ‘reason, enlightened by faith, attains, by God’s gift, a certain most fruitful understanding of the mysteries … but it never becomes adequate to investigating them in the way it does the truths that constitute its proper object.’ Like the ocean, the revealed mysteries of God have a visible surface, beneath which lie hidden and unfathomable depths…

Wonder, which is the beginning of philosophy, is also the prerequisite for theology.  In the exercise of his science, as in the conduct of his life, the theologian must convert and become like a child, recovering and preserving a sense of astonishment at the grandeur of what God has revealed in His Son.  Just as Peter and John ‘went out’ to see the Empty Tomb (cf Jn 20:3), so, according to the Angelic Doctor, ‘the man who wants to explore the mysteries of Christ must somehow go out of himself’.  This movement outwards, this Christological ecstasy, is an intellectual as well as a moral conversion.  The theologian must be ready to break away from the dull conventions of his conceptuality, as well as from the deadly habits of his carnality, and to conform himself to the fresh wisdom and wonder of the Church.” 

–John Saward, Cradle of Redeeming Love pp. 48-50

Deception – Quote from Allen Hood

“Satan the adversary, the ‘bringer of light,’ opposes the advances of the Gospel primarily through the realm of ideas and deception.  The object of his deception and the subject matter of his deception is who?  It is Jesus. 

That is why for the first four-hundred years the Church fought vigorously for the Person of Christ, to the shedding of blood to the laying down of their life.  There is a reason why they could not worship at the emperor’s altar.  Beloved, if Jesus is just a good teacher, if He just shows you the way to God, then they can easily worship at the altar of the emperor.  Yet hundreds and hundreds of thousands of believers year after year after year were led to the lions, were filleted alive, were skinned alive, were run through, were crucified upside down, were hung on crosses, they were burned and set on fire.  Why? 

Because He is not optional.  He is the unique, supreme, revelation of the Living God.  When you have Him you have it all.  When you do not, you do not.  Satan will oppose that revelation over everything, and he will do it through the most popular polished people on the globe.  He does not mind feeding the poor.  He minds the testimony of Jesus who is the only King who will return and set the poor truly free… [The testimony of Jesus Christ] is the subject matter that will enflame our hearts and set us on fire and make us fearless before the most powerful men and women of the earth.”

–Allen Hood, The Excellencies of Christ

Van Gogh Quote

 

‘If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.’

–Vincent Van Gogh