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When God…

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

When God had mercy on us, when God revealed Jesus Christ to us as brother, when God won our hearts by God’s own love, our instruction in Christian love began at the same time. When God was merciful to us, we learned to be merciful with one another. When we received forgiveness instead of judgment, we too were made ready to forgive each other. What God did to us, we then owed to others. The more we received, the more we were able to give; and the more meager our love for one another, the less we were living by God’s mercy and love. Thus God taught us to encounter one another as God has encountered us in Christ.  “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”  (Romans 15.7)

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Lingering Guilt & Insulting God’s Integrity

/ Dennis Griffith / 7 Comments

What do you do with the person who says: “I’ve asked God to forgive me, but I still feel guilty?”

A noted writer (R.C. Sproul, I think) was asked [this] once.  [His reply:] “Well,  if You still feel guilty, then pray to God again, but this time don’t ask Him to forgive you for the sin that is haunting you. Rather ask Him to forgive you for insulting His integrity by refusing to accept His forgiveness. Who are you to refuse to forgive yourself when God has forgiven you…it is often a very difficult thing to accept the grace of God. Our human arrogance makes us want to atone for our own sins to make it up to God with works of super-righteousness”.

~ Steve Brown

Our Universal Need

/ Dennis Griffith / 3 Comments

“Just so you know, the need for repentance, redemption, and forgiveness is universal. I don’t care if you are a liberal or a conservative, a religious fanatic or a militant atheist, a ‘spiritual’/’religious’ person or someone who runs from all that. It doesn’t matter to me if you listen to Billy Graham or follow Camus – you are in need.  No one in the human race is exempt.  Its in our DNA…

When we finally acknowledge our need for forgiveness and come to God in repentance, we find true power; for we now have nothing to hide or protect, we don’t care what people say or think about us, we are willing to speak truth gently, and we are enabled to speak with tremendous, supernatural power.”

~ Steve Brown, from Three Free Sins

NOTE: Watch a preview video and listen to Tullian Tchividjian interview Steve Brown about Thee Free Sins: here

Recovering the Grand Cosmic Significance

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

“We need to recover the grand, cosmic significance of Jesus’ saving activity that moves the gospel out of the narrow realm of self-preoccupation. One of the marvelous things about the gospel is that He has saved us so that we can be a part of His redeeming activity. The gospel, properly understood, is much broader than our concerns for personal survival, security, significance, success, or even self-centered sanctification. It presents us with a plunderer, and it bids us to throw ourselves away in the pursuit of this new world order.”

~ Bob Heppe

For Love of the Savior

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

“What ultimately keeps our motives biblically prioritized and holy before God is the profound conviction that obeying God will merit us nothing. This is why Jesus tells us that, when we have done all that we should do, we are still unprofitable servants. Jesus does not nullify the value of duty in order to dissuade us from serving God, but to keep is from depending on duty to gain God’s acceptance. When we understand that our works in themselves earn us no merit with God, then the only reason to do those works is love for Him. Thus we learn to serve God not for personal gain but for His glory – not for love of self but for love of the Savior.”

~ Bryan Chapell

A Thought for Mother’s Day

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

A thought for Mother’s Day:

“A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.”

~Washington Irving

Living & Loving to Please God

/ Dennis Griffith / 5 Comments

Steve Brown, professor at Reformed Theological Seminary and president of Key Life Network, penned a marvelous word picture of the motive and expression of a life gripped by God’s grace:

When I became a Christian, two things happened. I got saved, and I got loved.  I got loved so deeply that it still amazes me when I think about it. Because I got loved so deeply, I want to please the One who loved me that much. I may not always please him – sometimes I even run in the other direction, because his love can really hurt.  I may chafe against pleasing him; I may not even speak to him. But I’ll tell you something: I want to please him, and when I don’t please him, it hurts. Now if I really want to please him, I must know what pleases him. I find that out by reading the Word and listening to his commandments. When I know what he wants, I want what he wants. Love does that to you.  But I must know what he wants. That is why we must never soften the teaching of the Law of God. Holiness is a very important teaching as long as it is given in the context of God’s love.

~ from When Being Good Isn’t Good Enough

Our Great Shepherd

/ Dennis Griffith / 3 Comments

“The Lord’s my shepherd – I shall not be in want.”

(Psalm 23.1)

I am completely satisfied with his management of my life.  Why? Because He is the sheepman to whom no trouble is too great as He cares for His flock.  He is the rancher who is outstanding because of His fondness for sheep – Who loves them for their own sake as well as his personal pleasure in them.  He will, if necessary, be on the job twenty-four hours a day to see that they are properly provided for in every detail.  Above all, He is very jealous of His name and high reputation as ‘The Good Shepherd’.

~ Phillip Keller, from A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23

The Chief End of Man & God

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

I am inclining my ear listening for the collective “OUCH”!   But sometimes the truth hurts. Such is the case with this observation and assertion by Paul Copan, from his book, Is God a Moral Monster?, when applied to the typical American Evangelical:

The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647) begins with this question: ‘What is the chief end of man?’ The famous response is: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’

For many in the West (including professing Christians), the chief goal of many individuals is to ‘further my interests and to enjoy myself forever.’  Or if God exists, then the Catechism’s answer is subconsciously revised to this: ‘The chief end of God is to make me as comfortable and pain-free as possible’…

God’s ultimate role isn’t to advance my own interests and freedom… Rather, God seeks the interpersonal intimacy with us in the context of covenant making. .. God is the all-good Creator and Life-giver. He desires that his creatures live life as it should be.

My thanks to Tom Wood and the folks at gracedagain.com for this quote.

A Key to Vibrant Prayer

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

We are not desperate to pray because we are self-deceived. We are blind to our depravity. We don’t see ourselves as we really are. Do you want to learn to pray more? Learn of your sin. Ask God to show it to you, to give you a glimpse of your need. Ask him to show you what your sin cost him. Look at the cross again and again until you can say, “Lord, I’m so sinful, so weak, so deceived. Please, God, don’t let a day go by without reminding me of this. Make me dependent.”

Then, in faith, draw near knowing that you have needed cleansing but have been cleansed. Know that you have deserved wrath but have been fully loved. Sit down with your Beloved and hear him speak to you. Unburden your heart before him. Have fellowship with your heavenly husband. Be fully assured; he loves you when you pray, and he loves you when you don’t. You’re his bride when you hide from him, when you ignore him, when you think he doesn’t really care. Run, now, to the lover of your soul.

~ Elyse Fitzpatrick, Comforts from the Cross

A New Year’s Prayer

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

Here is a New Year’s prayer from Jim Eliot I don’t think I could ever express any better:

I pray that the Lord might crown this year with His goodness and in the coming one give you a hallowed dare-devil spirit in lifting the biting sword of Truth, consuming you with a passion that is called by the cultured citizen of Christendom ‘fanaticism’, but known to God as that saintly madness that led His Son through bloody sweat and hot tears to agony on a rude Cross – and Glory!