Conviction

Oh how sweet the conviction of the spirit! When we hear the words we don’t really want to hear but we do all the same, those things that the spirit whispers in our ears (or straight up slaps us in the face) in order to wake us up.
Through our studies here in Scotland one of the books we are reading is entitled “Spiritual disciplines for the Christian Life” by Donald S. Whitney. Over the last few weeks we have read about the disciplines of prayer, worship, evangelism, and serving, through all of which I have seen myself lacking.
It is quite easy to get caught up in the daily routine; get up, eat breakfast, prepare lunch (if even that), out the door and off to the world in which we live, either for education, business or pleasure. What is missing here? Where does God fit into all this? Have we forgotten our priorities?
Prior to my time here I will admit that I was just as caught up in my own routine as the next person. I rarely spent time with my Lord and attended church sunday morning simply to hear the sermon and be on my way. In my heart I thought nothing of it, God would understand as long as I tossed a thought or small prayer up to Him sometime during the course of the day, but even then, He deserves so much more than cold lip service! How selfish are my own priorities!
I will not claim that I have become more spiritual through my experience here, I will not even attempt to give some excuse as to why I happen to find more time for prayer and devotion to Christ here than as opposed to back home. There was no super spiritual revelation given to me, no sudden self realization, but simply a humbling wake up call. In the chapter on serving Whitney states:
“Do you remember what it is like not to know Christ, to be without God and without hope? Do you remember what it is like to be guilty before God and unforgiven? Do you remember what it is like to be only a heartbeat away from hell? Now do you remember what it is like to see Jesus Christ with the eyes of faith done by His death and resurrection? Do you remember what it is like to experience forgiveness and deliverance from judgement and hell? Do you remember what it was first like to have the assurance of Heaven and eternal life? When the fire of service to God grows cold, consider what great things the Lord has done for you.”
And while I stared down at the sword buried hilt-deep into my heart I knew that I had been taking all these sweet, undeserved blessing for granted. Who am I that God would even think to spare me the fires of hell? Who am I to neglect to give Him that service and devotion He so rightly deserves? I am not perfect, nor will I ever be, at least not in this present life. How sweet the grace of God, His mercy and His love deserves far more that what I have to offer, yet He chose me, a seashell in a sea of shells. God owes me nothing, I owe Him everything!
Jasmine.

Knowledge Applied to Life

And now it’s back to me, Brenda!  Wow, I can’t believe it’s my turn again already.  Time has been going by incredibly quickly.  A lot has been going on since I last wrote and it has been great!  A lot of what we have been doing is participating in some of the different ministries of the church.  CTI is not just about the book reading and the seminars.  It is also about living as part of the body of Christ.

One of our courses here at CTI is Ministry Practicum, and not only does this course involve reading and seminars, but it also involves assisting in some of the ministries of the church.  The ministries that we are involved in are: Mothers and Toddlers, Covenant Kids Club, and Covenanter Youth (CY).  Heather, Jasmine, and I help out with Mothers and Toddlers; Stephen and I help out with the Kids Club; and all of us help with CY.  I’ve really enjoyed being involved in these ministries and I’m really glad that it is a part of the CTI course.  It really makes you think about how you can be a more active member in your own church at home and it’s great to be involved in these parts of the church life of Airdrie. 

My favorite thing about CTI is that it’s not just about gaining knowledge about Christ and His church, but it’s also about applying this knowledge to your life.  Without applying the knowledge to your life, it won’t do you too much good. 

I hope you’ve been enjoying reading about our time here in Airdrie so far and about what we’ve been learning and such.  Keep reading!  Oh, and if you’re interested in doing the semester in Scotland for yourself, definitely do it!  You won’t regret it!

Reading – not just a town in England

Hi, this is Stephen. To me, Geneva is a place in Switzerland, football is when you kick a ball with your foot, and trunks belong on elephants. In short, I’m not an American. But I am doing the CTI. One of the benefits of doing the CTI is being forced to read a lot of good books. Many of them are books you probably mean to read sometime, but if it wasn’t for the mornings of set-reading where you’re put in a room with the books and told to get on with it, you’d probably never get them read. I’ll mention a few of the books below as I don’t think anyone else has yet.

For ‘Biblical Theology’ one of the books we’re studying is G. I. Williamson’s commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith. The WCF was written at one of the purest times of church history, by some of the greatest dudes ever. It’s so key to Presbyterianism, and we can talk about it a lot, but how well do we actually know it? Well, after this semester of CTI we’ll certainly know it a lot better!

‘Ministry Practicum’: One of the books which we study together for this is Don Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines, which recently made frequent-US-visitor Prof Edward Donnelly’s ‘10 books you absolutely must read’. And no matter how many times you have, it’s still challenging. Brenton and I are also studying Charles Bridges’ ‘The Christian Ministry’ and we have seminars on it each Thursday with Andrew. It’s brilliant – and you can’t often say that for a book that’s dedicated to ‘His Grace, the Archbishop of Canterbury!’

For Reformed Evangelism, we’re studying a book called ‘Every Thought Captive’, which is Van Til apologetics for High Schoolers (as it is described on the back..). So obviously a book that is going to be very helpful – but one I would probably never have read if it wasn’t for the CTI! Next semester we are moving on to study ‘Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God’ (Packer) and ‘Urban Harvest’ – both of which should be good.

The CTI is far more than books of course – but if you gained absolutely nothing else from it you would have been able to read some immense books and discuss them both with each other and with experienced pastors.

Though if that’s all you gained, you’d probably have bigger issues than not being able to pronounce ‘aluminium’ correctly.