I will bless The Lord at all times

After RPTS president Jerry O'Neill, during our spiritual development class, gave us a quote that became the central theme of this post, I'm excited to see that others are pointing out the problem as well. In this case, Phil Johnson, who we'll hear from on tonight's Bible Burgh as he shares on the pornification of the Pulpit. Here he shares on passion...

It's one of the supreme ironies of our culture that we're expected to be deliriously excited about worldly trifles and passing fads, but we're generally discouraged from taking serious things seriously. Above all, serious devotion to God is generally seen as a sign of alarming imbalance. An earnest worshiper of God may even be regarded by society as a deranged person—especially if he declares his faith.

Yet you can be as fanatical as you like about your favorite sports team; you can be wholly obsessed with some celebrity or pop star you have never even met; or you can thoroughly immerse yourself in some mindless fantasy game—and no one bats an eye. Celebrity worship is the real religion of our culture. A handful of highly-revered dead celebrities have the very same status in our culture as the mythological Greek gods who filled the pantheon of Rome in the first century.

That's a sad example of passion for the wrong things.

Psalm 34:1

I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

Derangement has never looked so good.

update 10.19: on the theme of foul mouths and the pornification of the pulpit, Phil Johnson today touches on cursing from the mouth of the Christian:

But notice what Paul himself said about lewd and off-color language. He classifies it as impurity in Ephesians 5:3-6, where he treats indecent language as one of several worldly substitutes for love. The Greek term Paul uses is akatharsia, a word that refers to every kind of filth and pollution—"uncleanness" in the KJV. Paul is talking about real spiritual uncleanness, not ceremonial defilement, but moral filth.

And when he gives some specific examples of akatharsia in verse 4, all of them have to do with the misuse of language: "obscenity," "foolish talk," and "coarse jesting." He is talking about the words we use, the things we talk about, and the spirit of our conversation. He covers all the bases.

Now, you might well wonder, if the context is dealing with genuine love vs. counterfeit love, how do smutty words, base conversations, and vulgar jokes fit into any category of phony love?

Click through to find out, and let's keep up the fight to be pure. We'll fall sometimes, but we shouldn't overlook impurity.