Cybersalt News
Oh look, Chicken Thursday!
You may have noticed that there have been no mailings yet this week. That is because for the next 5 weeks Mrs. Cybersalt and I have some major obligations and plans that are going to keep us from updating the Cybersalt Site and getting mailings out.
However, we have decided to continue to celebrate Chicken Thursdays with new mailings until we can resume daily posts some time around July 12th.
In the meantime you can still find thousands of pages to give you your Cybersal fix at www.cybersalt.org
Enjoy the rest of today's mailing! ~ Pastor Tim
Today's CleanLaugh
The Violin
Little Hope was practicing the violin in the living room while her father was trying to read in the den.
The family dog was lying in the den, and as the screeching sounds of little Hope's violin reached his ears, he began to howl loudly.
The father listened to the dog and the violin as long as he could. Then he jumped up and yelled above the noise, "Can't you play something the dog doesn't know?!"
Today's One-liner
One-liner #1066
Dodgeball: America's twist on stoning.
Today's Clean Pun
Wordy Fossil
A dinosaur with an extensive vocabulary: Athesaurus.
Today's Quote
Quote #1514
"I’m not afraid of failure; I’m afraid of succeeding at things that don’t matter."
- William Carey
Today's Illustration
Hypocritical Leadership
"Perhaps the greatest dilemma of the pastor - or any Christian leader - is the danger of hypocrisy.
By this I mean that, unlike other professionals, we as ministers are expected to proclaim God’s goodness and to provide encouragement at all times. We are always pointing people toward God in one way or another, in order to show them his worth and beauty. That’s the essence of our ministry.
But seldom will our hearts be in a condition to say such a thing with complete integrity, since our own hearts are often in need of encouragement, gospel centeredness, and genuine gladness.
Thus, we have two choices: either we have to guard our hearts continually in order to practice what we are preaching, or we live bifurcated lives of outward ministry and inward gloominess.
In this way, the ministry will make you a far better or a far worse Christian than you would have been otherwise. But it will not leave you where you were! And it will put enormous pressure on your integrity and character.
The key problem will be preaching the gospel while not believing the gospel. As ministers, we must be willing to admit that ministerial success often becomes the real basis for our joy and significance, much more so than the love and acceptance we have in Jesus Christ.
Ministry success often becomes what we look to in order to measure our worth to others and our confidence before God. In other words, we look to ministry success to be for us what only Christ can be.
All ministers who know themselves will be fighting this all their lives.
It is the reason for jealousy, for comparing ourselves to other ministers, for needing to control people and programs in the church, and for feeling defensive toward criticism.
At one level we believe the gospel that we are saved by grace not works, but at a deeper level we don’t believe it much at all. We are still trying to create our own righteousness through spiritual performance..."
- Timothy Keller
Featured Illustrations are items well suited for illustrating or inspiring a point in a sermon, speech, or devotional. Funny, moving, or perhaps even graphic, the point of them is the point you make with them.
The Cybersalt Digest is a ministry of Pastor Tim and Cybersalt.org - a member of the Cybersalt family of sites.