by Bret Capranica | May 2, 2007 | Presidential History
Here’s some ineresting tidbits on President Reagan’s copious diaries (for those who enjoy Presidential history). Reagan was intense diary writer – Yahoo!...
by Bret Capranica | May 2, 2007 | Pastoral Ministry, Personal, Time/Life Management
Tuesday is generally a day I devote to administrative issues. Because one of the areas of oversight I have on our team is the church’s finances, much of the time I spend revolves around making sure our records are kept up and are accurate – especially at the beginning of a new month, as I close out the previous month and prepare a detailed account of our finances to present to the congregation. So, here’s the ‘tick-tock’ of this average pastor’s average Tuesday: 3:00 a.m. Awoke to shower and dress for the day. 3:30 a.m. Devotional Time in my home study. 4:30 a.m. Began work on my sermon for Sunday. I spent time translating Romans 5:15-17 and put together a block diagram of the text and spent time observing parallel and contrasting phrases in the text. I then put together a rough exegetical outline of the text and formatted my exegetical notes to begin lexical and syntactical work tomorrow. 6:00 a.m. Our daughter, Brie, awoke. On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, I take feeding duty in the morning. What a joy. I heard her making her typical ‘waking-up’ sounds and went in to check on her and she greeted me with a big smile, wide awake, ready to eat. So I prepared her bottle, fed and changed her. 6:30 am. Kelly was up by the time we finished and took Brie with her while I finished a few more thoughts in my sermon study. 7:00 a.m. Kelly and I had breakfast together and spent time reading together from John Piper’s book, God is the Gospel. We then prayed together...
by Bret Capranica | May 2, 2007 | Christian Living
Chapter 9 in John Owen’s Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers Owen now begins to give practical guidance on how to mortify sin: Consider what dangerous symptoms your lust has attending or accompanying it – whether it has any deadly mark on it or no; if it has, extraordinary remedies are to be used; an ordinary course of mortification will not do it (89). Inverterateness [state of being hardened, habitual, deep-rooted] When a lust has lain long in the heart, corrupting, festering, cankering, it brings the soul to a woeful condition. In such a case an ordinary course of humiliation will not do the work (90). Secret pleas of the heart for the countenancing [approving] of itself, and keeping up its peace, notwithstanding the abiding of a lust, without a vigourous gospel attempt for its mortification (91). When upon thoughts, perplexing thoughts about sin, instead of applying himself to the destruction of it, a man searches his heart to see what evidences he can find of a good condition, notwithstanding that sin and lust, so that it may go well with him...
by Bret Capranica | May 1, 2007 | Pastoral Ministry, Personal, Time/Life Management
What does a pastor do all day (and night, sometimes)? As a means of answering this question for those who know little about, would like to know more of the average life of a pastor and as a way for me to scrutinize my time (at least for one week of the year), I am going to chronicle just exactly what goes on in an average week in my (a very average pastor) life. I really have no other aim than reflecting the various issues that crop us, time it takes to prepare a sermon, how home and family work at The Capranica Villa. I’m open to rebuke and hints that might help me be more effective in my use of time and process of ministry (maybe the first is to quit blogging – but read Steve Weaver’s posts first). My format for these posts will be to review, in a ‘tick-tock’ fashion, the previous day and compare it to what I had planned. It should be a good (perhaps quite bland) evaluation of God’s providence as well as my penchant for trying to do too much and accomplishing too little. So, here’s a quick review of how Monday, April 30 ended up in the life of this very average pastor: 6:30 a.m. Awoke to prepare for the day (shower, dress, etc). 7:00 a.m. Devotional Time in my home study. Currently, my devotional time consists of reading for about 15 minutes from a particular non-biblical book (John Owen currently), then I follow a one year Bible reading plan where I read through a portion of the Old Testament and...
by Bret Capranica | May 1, 2007 | Christian Living
At the end of chapter 7 of John Owen’s Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers [Kapic and Taylor], Owen anticipates an objection to his first principle of how to mortify sin (one must be a true Christian). Does the suggestion that one must be a true Christian mean that unregenerate men should not be exhorted to avoid or cease from evil? Owen answers, “no.” It is to be looked on as a great issue of the wisdom, goodness and love of God, that by manifold ways and means he is pleased to restrain the sons of men from running forth into that compass of excess and riot which the depravity of their nature would carry them out unto with violence (84). However, in his exhortations to preachers, Owen warns: It will not avail to beat a man off from his drunkenness into a sober formality. To break men off particular sins, and not to break their hearts, is to deprive ourselves of advantages of dealing with them (85). Can sin be killed without an interest in the death of Christ, or mortified without the Spirit? If such directions should prevail to change men’s lives as seldom they do, yet they never reach to the change of their hearts or conditions. They may make men self-justiciaries or hypocrites, not Christians. It grieves me oftentimes to see poor souls, that have a zeal for God and a desire of eternal welfare, kept by such directors and directions under a hard, burdensome, outside worship and service of God, with many special endeavors for mortification, in an utter ignorance of the righteousness...
