Pete's Blog

I've already posted this entry in early May, but the formatting was choppy. In posting the entry yesterday on the True Woman Conference, though, I had an idea for how I could post the list in a more appealing, more organized way. The original post follows, although, I did make a few changes.

Last year when I got back from Tanzania I wrote a list of the characteristics that I think every Christian man should exemplify. I was motivated to do this having worked with some tremendous men who displayed amazing character and vision and love for Jesus Christ. Furthermore, a girl I was working with commented that she respected the biblical man I described. I figured I would share these characteristics.

Another thing to note is that these come from the mind of a single guy. I've never dated a girl so I'm not basing these assertions on any BGR experience. You may compare them to the list of 13 characteristics (the first six and the final seven) of manhood that Albert Mohler wrote up, which he relates heavily to married life.

They're not grouped according to importance. Some of them are abstract (e.g., 35) but most of them are practical (e.g., 2). But they're not grouped this way either. I aimed to group them topically.

Sorry the list is so long. That notwithstanding, please give me feedback.

The Lord's men are those who:

Update: I've added a clarification on number 22.

Labels: Abbreviations, Characters, Manhood, Resources

• the gang lords and drug dealers in the Jane and Finch area (Toronto gang hotspot) to find Christ.
• abortion doctors to be converted. Similarly, pray that a Canadian will be raised up who will fight for the unborn as William Wilberforce fought for enslaved Africans.
• University physics professors to know the true age of the earth, biology professors to know where humans came from, philosophy professors to know that absolutes exist and religion professors to know that the Bible is from God, so that they stop leading generation after generation of students astray.
• the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada and the other liberal protestant denominations to have a revolution within themselves where they find themselves more conservative (i.e., believing the Bible).
• a theological thinker of the weight (not literally) and stature of Augustine to be given to Canada. I mention this one recalling that Mark Dever, when he visited the tank where Ambrose baptized Augustine, prayed for God to let him take part in calling great men to the ministry of the Word.
• the tens of thousands of immigrants moving to Canada every week to come to faith; there could be such an amazing foretaste of heaven, of every nation, tongue and tribe, within these borders.
• your pastor's sermons to be published in the local newspaper every week, as Charles Spurgeon's were, reaching so many people in your community with the Gospel.

Labels: Abbreviations, Prayer, Resources

I've been thinking about how Jer said that having a so-called pro-life Republican ticket doesn't make him a Republican supporter. Having said that he would deal with that later, I will talk about it in two days. Before talking about where to draw the line when a party advocates murder, I desire to quickly (or not so quickly) address more completely where I have observed Senator McCain standing on the issue. While he has consistently voted pro-life whenever abortion legislature has come before the senate, there are aspects of his stance that remain questionable.

First, he has consistently voted to federally fund stem cell research, which is not immediately bad. Stem cells are most abundantly available in dead foetuses. So researchers go to fertility clinics who practice in vitro fertilization (IVF, for short, where multiple eggs are fertilized and the embryo [i.e., fetus, i.e., baby] that is most likely to make it is implanted in the female carrier's womb and rest are scrapped) and buy the discarded embryos. The researchers extract the stem cells, thus terminating the embryo (i.e., killing the baby). I have a big problem with IVF, and McCain probably does, too. His reasoning for desiring to fund stem cell research, though, is out of the mindset that the embryos are already discarded anyway, so they may as well get used for the good of humanity. Some would say that position is encouraging IVF to continue. I tend not to focus on that part of stem cell research too much, right now, because there is a darker side to it. Stem cell researchers often don't have enough embryos to harvest the cells from, so they fertilize eggs with the intention of extracting their cells. So while McCain is probably opposed to that practice, his legislation is funding these baby killers. That is what makes supporting the funding of stem cell research bad.

The second concern I have with McCain's pro-life stance is much less significant, but needs to be drawn attention to for careful consideration, nevertheless. To put this point in perspective, I need to briefly refer to history. Abortion in the US was legalized in 1973. A referendum was not taken on the issue. The president didn't submit the legislation on it before the senate. No elected official was responsible for this legislation. Abortion was won by a one vote majority in the Supreme Court over the Roe vs. Wade case. Since then, social conservatives have been trying to get enough conservatives on the bench of the Supreme Court to overturn that unconstitutional ruling (judges exist to interpret the constitution and law, and the non-personhood of a baby was certainly not implied in there by the Founding Fathers).

In 2005, President Bush put forward three conservative nominees for the bench (two spots opened up and one of his nominees withdrew her application) and McCain was opposed to each of them. He claims that he did it because he didn't consider them qualified. I don't remember why. McCain had strong disagreements with the candidates' conservatism, so, he may have genuinely been worried that they would legislate conservatism from the bench. This would be a fair criticism if he were worried that these nominees would be deciding cases purely on their own values and not as an interpretation of the constitution. It raises the question of McCain's pro-life stance because there simply needs to be a conservative majority on the bench, with an appeal of Roe vs. Wade before them, for abortion rights to be overturned. (This is a bit overstated, but isn't much of an exaggeration. There would only be a few more details to sort out, I suspect.) But if McCain won't put the nominees forward for this to happen, what good is he for the pro-life cause?

Labels: Abbreviations, Friends, Politics

(This post is a response to a post on Lydia's blog about women serving in the church. The response is too long, in my mind, to justifiably be placed as a comment on her blog. Though the entry seems like a long one for my blog, follow the headings if you only want to read the essentials.)

Suppose that you have an isolated group of Christians, one well trained woman and some men who are unready for ministry. What is she to do knowing that God has ordained a separate role for women within the church than the men?

Maybe all that needs to be said is to listen to this talk given by Randy Stinson. The whole of the talk is him explaining what a husband and father's leadership in the family looks like. It should be very similar for an elder in a church. The talk is helpful for this discussion because in listening to what the man should be doing (i.e., leading), you get an idea of where a woman can justifiably step in (i.e., leading does not equate with doing everything so she can help when the leaders ask for that help, as long as it's within the bounds of Scripture [e.g., the leaders can't ask for her help to rob the bank when the church treasury is in the red]).

(The following paragraph is an encouragement to prepare for the long haul that does not contribute to the main thought of answering the question.)

Before saying anything, I think that it would take a lot of time to build a healthy church out of this. Church planting is tough. A woman, by herself, raising up unskilled men to plant a church: tougher. Furthermore, she might not even be getting them to plant a church. She might be going against their old paradigms, such as, possibly, Someone else will do it. When MacArthur went to shepherd Grace Community they had female elders there. It took quite some time to bring a biblical vision of church administration and leadership to his church. Dever, who also went to shepherd a church in need of a private reformation (when I use "reformation" in the context of a single local church, I mean one, where if you walked in, it might seem like they're playing church, they don't have a biblical structure for church leadership, the church doesn't deal with public sin, the preaching is unsystematic and possibly only loosely based on a text of Scripture, where they need to change a lot of the ways that they do ministry, thus, it needs a reformation), now pleads with pastors shepherding churches in need of reformation not to do it quickly, nor with a totalitarian style to it. So, if she's dealing with some men with baggage, it might take a long time. Fortunately, a church has that amount of time, five to ten years. A campus ministry, where your leaders are around for at most four years (i.e., a degree for five years minus the frosh year), is not a likely place for this reformation to be able to happen.

(Back to answering the issue.)

I was about to use the word "unqualified" where I wrote "unready" in the first sentence of the question paragraph, but I chose to use "unready" because I don't think that in every case it takes too much to be qualified. For example D.A. Carson said in a talk on elders that the churchmen in Derbe, Lystra, Iconium and Antioch of Pisidia couldn't have been believers very long before Paul and Barnabas "had appointed elders for them in every church" (Ac. 14:23). This suggests to me that they were simply relatively spiritually mature (i.e., they were spiritually mature in comparison to some of their brothers within the church).

With this in mind, I think that the woman should select two or three of the men who she sees are the (relatively) stronger believers. Then she should (gently) encourage that they be appointed the elders of that church. (This is where I think that the Stinson talk would prove helpful.) These men obviously want the church to exist (otherwise they wouldn't be in the picture). After she suggests that they should be part of it they'll leave, desiring to remain in complacency, or they'll stay, and, with fear and trembling, accept the task of building the church. These men can resource the woman and ask her help in setting church direction, as long as the responsibility and outcome rests on the shoulders of the men. The individual men can ask her help when doing Bible study preparation, or even in their quiet times in finding out what the Bible means.

Hopefully with much prayer and patience, the Lord would bless this entreprise.

(That's it for my suggestions. All of the following is my attempt to explain why I'm thinking in this way, from the Bible.)

The reason this is difficult is because we need to apply 1 Timothy 2:11-15 in a God-honouring, people-building way. The first observation that I would make is that the passage in question is referring to the local church and corporate worship within the body (read Grudem for the argument behind this claim). More specifically, I think that it's saying that elders (or pastors; same thing [cf. 1P. 5:1, 2]) may not be women (read Piper for his argument behind this claim). Otherwise, it's not very specific. I think that Paul deliberately left lots of room to work within. The woman, then, would be balancing giving as much help as possible to build the church, while neither giving the church the appearance of being led by a woman, nor of giving the members the feeling of reliance on female leadership that would become systemic and difficult to heal later on. For example, I think that the woman could legitimately do a lot, but she needs to be concerned about what the future outcome of her current actions will be: With what I am doing right now, will the church in the future be more feminine (and thus, less healthy) than if I take a step back now, slowing down the progress of the church, but investing in the long term health of the church? That might be the case.

For this reason, if there were other churches around in the area, or even in the next city over, I think that the wisest choice for the woman (for the sake of clarity, from, say, church A) would be to discern from among them a healthy church (say, church B) that would be able to help church A. She could then ask the elders of church B to offer the men of church A some guidance and help in building up their body (i.e., church A). This would show the importance of relying on male leadership, but would also give her church real and valuable help.

As a note, Mohler, for example, would say that 1 Timothy 2:12 prohibits women from speaking at C4C functions. Since Paul was specifically referring to the local church, I don't entirely agree. Paul was not specific, so, in trusting that the Scriptures are sufficient in their restrictions, we must believe that God is not opposed to women speaking at C4C meetings. (If you disagree with this, then, essentially, you're saying that 1 Timothy has wider applications than just within the church. Are there to be deacons in every C4C group? Are there to be weddings? Lists of widows? All in all, I don't think Paul is referring to outside of the local church, and I don't think that C4C is a church.) So it comes down to a question of beneficial and unwise, as opposed to right and wrong. So, while I think that it's beneficial to have as many male speakers as possible at C4C, I don't think that it's wrong to fill in the gaps with female speakers. (That was my attempt as Weekly Meeting Coordinator at Carleton.)

--

I introduced three characters in this post. Randy Stinson is the president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and Dean of the School of Leadership and Church Growth at Southern. Sometimes he reminds me of Driscoll, making fun of guys who don't fit the Wild At Heart paradigm for men (i.e., guys who might cry, or wear pink – though Stinson is more apologetic in this case than Driscoll typically is, or who drink decaf coffee). Other than that, I find him helpful. He must be brilliant to serve under Mohler at Southern, though.

D.A. Carson is a professor at TEDS (i.e., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, but I call it by the rhyme of "peds" for short, while most of its students, I think, call it Trinity for short). He was born in Quebec, shepherded a Baptist church in B.C. and now lives in Chicago. (Well, not quite, Deerfield, Illinois.) The biography of him that I linked to above was written by Andreas Köstenberger and is thoroughly enjoyable. It's short, descriptive and enlightening. Piper once said that he recommends choosing one author and devoting yourself to reading everything he's written. (Piper's chosen Jonathan Edwards.) I might choose Carson. Carson is so well renowned that he became the subject of a satire blog on the subject of him. (Of which, I particularly enjoyed, this entry involving Paige Patterson.) I could go on about Dr. Carson, but I'll stop here.

Labels: Abbreviations, Bible, Blogs, Characters, Friends, Humour, Long, Manhood, Ministry, Resources

Labels: Abbreviations, Miscellaneous, Resources

Labels: Abbreviations, Bible, Friends, Manhood, Ministry, Prayer

I was praising Adam to Monica this past school year, when I realized that I'd learned so much serving in C4C (i.e., Campus for Christ) with such great leaders. This entry and the following two are to acknowledge the three KSLs (Key Student Leader) under whom I've served.

Each leader's acknowledgement is fairly lengthy, so, even though I've already written up each of the three entries, I'll stagger them by two days each. Here's the first:

--

Jason Parker became the Carleton's KSL of Campus Crusade for Christ in his second year, the academic year of 2003-04, my first year at Carleton, and (I say lightly) reigned until he graduated in 2006, with an honours degree in Classics (i.e., the study of ancient civilizations, I think). Before I became comfortable talking about dating and complementarianism, I liked to brag that he was the one who kept dating out of C4C (though he always disliked being accredited for this). Not to rub salt in any wounds, but while he served as KSL, (again, jesting) at least three relationships ended, one relationship led to marriage and the couple left Ottawa, and any other people who entered relationships left the ministry. (While that final clause is a joke, I say it with some disappointment. It breaks my heart to see some relationships that are clearly unevenly yoked, get in the way of a relationship with the living God, Jesus Christ.) But, one couple did prevail in their relationship, at which point, Mr. Parker left Ottawa. That was when he graduated, but when you leave that detail out it makes him sound like a prude who thinks that dating and marriage are bad things, not to be tolerated.

All joking aside, the Bible character I most associate with him is Barnabas, the "son of encouragement" (Ac. 4:36). For some reason, Parker made consistent efforts to relate to me. The first time we ever really talked was in my second year, after our weekly meeting, the whole group went skating on the canal. He skated with me that night as we did the length of the course, and back. Then, sometimes he would be intending on hanging out with Adam and invite me to come along. I've never expressed to him how much that meant to me.

At the end of my third year, thinking that I had just faithfully finished a year of leading a DG and serving in the ministry, I was expecting to be added to the Servant Team (hereafter referred to as "ST"). I wasn't, much to the shattering of my haughty ego. Adam later went on to tell me that Parker had encouraged me to be reconsidered for the ST. I was surprised to hear that. That's not an exhaustive list of ways that Parker had shown trust in me.

Parker was also real. He wasn't about to let anyone walk all over him. There was one time at a weekly meeting we had an unexpected addition to our scheduled program, and later he told me that it made him angry. In no way saying this to shame him, in his vulnerability (which I usually equate with being real), he made it possible to learn from his faults, as much as from his good example.

No doubt though, Parker's greatest strength was his ability to make himself available to the men around him, and to encourage them in their strengths. He definitely wasn't perfect, but I think that he was a great encourager.

Labels: Abbreviations, Bible, Friends, Manhood, Ministry

On Saturday, I was taking the elevator up to my mother's condominium with another guy in the elevator. I was carrying a notebook, the type that we used in elementary school that's big and colourful on the outside, and he asked me whether I was going to study. I told him that school was over. So he asked what the book what for, so I told him for notes, not realizing that my response would probably perplex him. Upon his confusion, he asked me whether it was recreational, so I made it more clear, "Sermon notes. Church notes." He finally understood it. He then asked what church, wondering whether I was with the Latter Day Saints (or LDS, for short). I quickly said, "No" and told him that I was a baptist, as he walked out of the elevator. Either he's a Mormon, in which case his response wouldn't scare me at all, or else, we as evangelicals have done a poor job of representing ourselves in society.

Labels: Abbreviations, Miscellaneous

We want to see Jesus lifted high
a banner that flies across this land
That all men might see the truth and know
He is the way to heaven

Labels: Abbreviations, Miscellaneous

Last year when I got back from Tanzania I wrote a list of the characteristics that I think every Christian man should exemplify. I was motivated to do this having worked with some tremendous men who displayed amazing character and vision and love for Jesus Christ. Furthermore, a girl I was working with commented that she respected the biblical man I described. I figured I would share these characteristics.

Another thing to note is that these come from the mind of a single guy. I've never dated a girl so I'm not basing these assertions on any BGR experience. You may compare them to the list of 13 characteristics (the first six and the final seven) of manhood that Albert Mohler wrote up, which he relates heavily to married life.

They're not grouped according to importance. Some of them are abstract (e.g., 35) but most of them are practical (e.g., 2). But they're not grouped this way either. I aimed to group them topically.

Please give me feedback. (Sorry the list is so long. I intended to post them over the span of three entries, but I've spent hours trying to do that, so I just gave up and did it this way. I hope that you still read it.)

The Lord's men are those who:

1. are steadfast in honesty and reliable in their follow through;

2. always wear the same face knowing that God is omnipresent;

When I say this I am speaking against people who get serious, humble and servant-like when they are in leadership but who are rowdy, immature and self-interested when not in that leadership role. People should follow their male leaders because of who they are, not the example that they display from "9 to 5."

3. learn from their mistakes;

4. admit their weaknesses and get help when they need it;

5. take good help when it is needed and offered;

I often struggle with a saviour-complex. Men need to be humble enough to give others who are blessed with talents—especially talents that these men do not have—the opportunity to serve where they have been blessed without fearing the possibility that the spotlight of leadership may dim as the leader takes less responsibility; men should take on leadership "not to please man, but to please God" (1 Thessalonians 2:4).

6. give others the chance to excel;

7. do not fear those smarter, more talented, more experienced, or more knowledgeable than them;

8. step up to encourage those around them;

9. make time for the people they're leading;

I'm writing this having returned from South East Africa project (hereafter referred to as SEA) interning (i.e., a leadership role). On top of that, for the Adventure Cycle (a one week component of SEA where teams went to different regions in Tanzania and show the evangelistic movie The Jesus Film) I led a team. From that I noticed that it's important to take care of the people who are being led by us which is very difficult if you are disconnected from them. On top of that, this important character trait of the Lord's men implies that men who are in leadership need to take time to connect with the people who are difficult to get to know whom they are leading. This needs to be done in order to serve the whole team. Ignoring the tough-to-get-to-know person has the highest probability of making him feel neglected (having been this type before in the past, I state with confidence neglected people always know that they are being neglected) which leads to bitterness. One bitter person can bring the whole team down. Illustration: One moldy slice of bread put in any loaf of bread quickly ruins the whole good loaf.

10. share their strength with others;

When someone is feeling dismayed by circumstances but the man is not discouraged at all, muster up a strategy to explain why there is hope, why it is better to not worrying about it, or even distract the discouraged person from his circumstances by talking about something that will bring the person's mind somewhere else.

11. are able to look long and hard for ways to relate to the most difficult men;

12. do not give up, but who are able to persevere, especially around the people they lead;

13. steadfastly never complain without taking action;

It's useless to complain and do nothing, in fact, it is destructive. Others might see the merits of the complaints and become discouraged. My personal opinion is to never complain in public, especially to people you are leading. People love watching leaders improve situations. So if a man complains about the situation, he had better be ready to set an example of working towards solutions instead of being those Israelites wandering the desert grumbling.

14. are courageous;

15. are patient;

16. are generous and sacrificial;

17. are fair;

18. are compassionate;

19. genuinely love their parents;

20. recognize that they need to lead women;

21. honour women in their personal thoughts;

This is referring to sexual purity with respect to the man's personal thoughts. Every woman was created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26) and men's sisters in Christ are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). Treat them as such.

22. never flirt with women;

This might raise controversy. I think that flirting is immature and completely inappropriate for men (women too, but I'll leave that issue for those more qualified to deal with). If a man is interested in a woman then he should initiate something with her—not keep her guessing. And if he's not interested in her then he shouldn't treat her in a special way. If you wouldn't do it to a guy, don't do it to a girl. An example of this deals with men's playing around with women's clothes. At the beach it might be tempting to steal a girl's shoes and tease her with it. A man wouldn't do this with a guy because the reaction isn't appealing; it only feels good coming from a girl. On top of that, it is easier to do it to a girl because by and large men are physically bigger and stronger than women, which makes it easier to do. Each of these reasons for acting in this way is unacceptable.

23. treasure deep friendships with brothers in Christ;

The Church is being weakened because men have not made enough deep connections with brothers who can sharpen them (Proverbs 27:17) but often sacrifice it for deep connections with women, which makes personal growth in manhood ambiguous (read: If a guy hangs out with girls all the time, they'll sharpen them in the ways of the Lord, but not into biblical manhood since they cannot experience that together as they are women, not men!). Men need men. And they should not be ashamed of these relationships.

24. greatly value the men in their lives who are their role models;

25. have hearts for the lost, broken, and abandoned;

"Jesus wept" (John 11:35). The ultimate man cried. Men should not be ashamed to have convictions that lead them to tears. It is not a weakness.

26. privately rebuke;

This important character trait has two implications: 1) That men should rebuke; and 2) that they should do it in private so as to not humiliate those who err.

27. never cut others down (especially not to make a point);

28. naturally cast vision, not only out of necessity, but out of deep conviction of heart;

29. lead others to prayer;

30. respect authority;

Men need to learn to submit themselves to rules, especially the ones that they do not understand or that they disagree with (provided these are not going against God's commands) in order to demonstrate how they want to be treated when they lead.

31. lead out in doing the tasks that none want to do;

32. oppose indecision and inaction at every challenged faced;

In most occasions decisions must be made and action must be taken. Fear of being wrong is not an excuse for doing the contrary. If others are not willing to do both, step up as one of the Lord's men, make a decision and act.

33. never demand anything based on their own merit;

Too often it's, "I need," which is fair; men have needs. But men may not (i.e., are not allowed to) demand it. Men deserve hell (Romans 6:23). It is rude and unloving to expect that a man should be given his every need because he exists. God gives and He takes away at His leisure (Job 1:21). To state this positively, in humility, ask for your daily bread.

34. know the Word of God;

35. glorify God with their lives;

36. attribute their every gift and success to their King.

Labels: Abbreviations, Characters, Manhood, Resources

I’m looking back on the four years that I’ve served at Carleton. I could have been bolder, taken more initiative, had more faith, read more books – and the list goes on. It was only just now that I realized that I could have prayed more.

This morning the Lord revealed that my ambitions are too small. I want to get married. I want to plant a church. I want to reach the lost with the Gospel. I want to see Africa healed of all of its aches. A common glance at those doesn’t immediately reveal a problem. However, there is a systematic problem. These are all finite goals. It’s not Jesus. Let me illustrate this by elaborating on the first ambition that I listed.

I’ve been listening lately to a Podcast from Focus on the Family called The Boundless Show, produced for Young Adults. It talks about money, culture and other issues surrounding Young Adulthood, but in each of the episodes that I’ve listened to, it talks about BGR (i.e., Boy Girl Relationships) to a certain extent. I’ve been getting pretty excited at the thought of being married someday. I started wondering whether it (alone) was spurring me on in my walk of sanctification (i.e., becoming more holy). I ask myself that a lot: Am I trying to lose weight to show the unbelieving world that I have self-control, or to attract a girl? Am I reading my Bible so that I can talk about it and have a leg up to catch a girl’s attention? This morning I was praying that God would lead me to my wife and I asked myself, no doubt, filled with the Spirit, What are you going to be praying for when it happens?

That hit me really hard. I prayed right away that God would give me a thirst for His glory. That I would desire to seek after Jesus more than anything else; more than marriage, more than Africa, more than perishing souls. I really don’t want to be an idolater. I want to find Jesus. (More on this later.)

And this brought me to prayer. I am convinced that there is so much that I can’t change: I can’t change the colour of the sky, I can’t make night day, I can’t force my father to see the evil of the world, confess his sins and receive Christ, I can’t raise up labourers for the harvest. The Sovereign Lord can!

The biggest thing that’s eating me right now is that I didn’t pray enough for where I was. This past year I’ve led the Young Adults group at my church, led the Engineering student MDA (i.e., a Movement Develop Area, or as Ottawa student, Mandy, rephrased it, an Area to Develop a Movement), led a DG (i.e., a Discipleship Group), which unfortunately was disjoint from leading the MDA, and coordinated Weekly Meeting. So many things to pray for, and yet so little prayer offered up. And when I did pray, it wasn’t specific, it was vague. I think that much of the time that I spent praying for Engineering students I was giving lip service, just wanting to get it over with.

So I think that I’ve learned a valuable lesson, that I really do have access to the supernatural resources of God through prayer. I need to pursue ways to make sure that I’m praying for those areas that I’m leading. If I’m not, then who is? I need to regularly cast the vision to myself of why I’m ministering where I’m ministering so that I care. I need to make sure that I’m not serving in so many areas that I get overwhelmed praying for all of them, all the time. I need to schedule prayer times and keep them. I need to gather people to pray with me. I need this to happen, for the sake of the salvation of my soul and the glory of God’s Name.

Labels: Abbreviations, Ministry, Miscellaneous, Prayer

This is a surprising first post. I figured that I'm going to be writing a lot pertaining to the Bible, and in so doing I'll be using mostly abbreviations for the Scripture references. Some may not be intuitive. Therefore, I've decided to leave it unambiguous, by posting on it:

Book (Abbreviation)
Genesis (Ge.)
Exodus (Ex.)
Leviticus (Le.)
Numbers (Nu.)
Deuteronomy (De./Dt.)
Joshua (Js.)
Judges (Jd.)
Ruth (Ru.)
1 Samuel (1S.)
2 Samuel (2S.)
1 Kings (1K.)
2 Kings (2K.)
1 Chronicles (1Ch.)
2 Chronicles (2Ch.)
Ezra (Ez.)
Nehemiah (Ne.)
Esther (Es.)
Job (Jb.)
Psalms/Psalm (Ps.)
Proverbs (Pr.)
Ecclesiastes (Ec.)
Song of Songs (So.)
Isaiah (Is.)
Jeremiah (Je.)
Lamentations (La.)
Ezekiel (Ek.)
Daniel (Da.)
Hosea (Ho.)
Joel (Jl.)
Amos (Am.)
Obadiah (Ob.)
Jonah (Jo.)
Micah (Mi.)
Nahum (Na.)
Habakkuk (Hk.)
Zephaniah (Zp.)
Haggai (Hg.)
Zechariah (Zc.)
Malachi (Ml.)
Matthew (Mt.)
Mark (Mk.)
Luke (Lk.)
John (Jn.)
Acts (Ac.)
Romans (Ro./Rm.)
1 Corinthians (1Co.)
2 Corinthians (2Co.)
Galatians (Ga.)
Ephesians (Ep.)
Philippians (Pp.)
Colossians (Co./Cl.)
1 Thessalonians (1Th.)
2 Thessalonians (2Th.)
1 Timothy (1Ti.)
2 Timothy (2Ti.)
Titus (Ti.)
Philemon (Pm.)
Hebrews (Hb./Hw.)
James (Ja./Jm.)
1 Peter (1P.)
2 Peter (2P.)
1 John (1J.)
2 John (2J.)
3 John (3J.)
Jude (Ju.)
Revelation (Re./Rv.)

Realitically, I'm probably not going to speak on most of these books, but it doesn't hurt to address them before they come up.

Labels: Abbreviations, Bible, Disclaimer