Not Smoke and Bones: John Piper on Martyrdom

Mission Statement

In classical sacrifices, the people get the good bits, and the gods get the refuse, the bits that would get thrown out otherwise.

Not our God. Leviticus (particularly Leviticus 3) describes the sacrifices that our LORD demanded from His people of Israel. God gets the kidneys, the tail, and all the fat. He gets the prime steak, He gets the best.

Today we do not literally give sacrifices of animals. For us the ultimate sacrifice has been made through our Lord, Christ Jesus. But should always be our ambition to do the same thing - to offer God the best of what we have, to offer Him the fat, and not the smoke and bones.

Tuesday, 20 September 2011

John Piper on Martyrdom

How likely is the crisis of martyrdom today? Perhaps a better question is: How important is martyrdom today? How impor¬tant is suffering for the sake of taking the gospel to the nations? George Otis Jr. shocked many at the Second Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Manila in 1989 when he asked, “Is our failure to thrive in Muslim countries owing to the absence of martyrs? Can a covert church grow in strength? Does a young church need martyr models?”

From his book Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ

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Humility does not think much or little of itself; it does not think of itself at all.
- Charlotte Mason

Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.
- Mother Teresa

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
- GK Chesterton

...it is not an extraordinary spiritualitythat makes one refuse to do ordinary work, but a wish to prove that one is not ordinary - which is a dead giveaway of spiritual conceit.
- Elisabeth Elliot