“To become more like Jesus is to feel increasingly unable to do life, increasingly wary of your heart. Paradoxically, you get holier while you are feeling less holy. The very thing you were trying to escape – your inability – opens the door to prayer and then grace.”
– Paul Miller, A Praying Life
Do you know the Christ of the Gospels? Or have you fallen into the trap to which Christians (especially, perhaps, Reformed Christians) who love doctrine and systematic theology are sometimes susceptible (unlike John Calvin, it should be said): fascination with dogmatic formula at the expense of love for the Savior’s person?
– Sinclair Ferguson, from Yesterday, Today, and Forever
“The true Christian cannot be hid, he cannot escape notice. A man truly living and functioning as a Christian will stand out. He will be like salt; he will be like a city set on a hill, a candle set upon a candlestick.
But we can also add this further word: The true Christian does not even desire to hide his light. He sees how ridiculous it is to claim to be a Christian and yet deliberately to try to hide the fact.
A man who truly realizes what it means to be a Christian, who realizes all that the grace of God has meant to him and done for him, and understands that, ultimately, God has done this in order that he may influence others, is a man who cannot conceal it. Not only that; he does not desire to conceal it, because he argues thus, ‘Ultimately the object and purpose of it all is that I might be functioning in this way’.”
-Martin Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount.
“When we as Christians sin, we can react in one of three ways:
1) We can become hardened to our sin.
2) We can sink into utter despair and say, ‘Its all over.’ I’ve known Christians who have spent twenty years despairing over one sin….
[T]he only right course of action for us as Christians is to…
3) become increasingly sensitive to our sin, but also increasingly to know the forgiveness that is ours on the basis of the blood of Christ – to have the assurance that, if Jesus died for me when I was a sinner before my salvation, how much more He must love me now!”
-Francis Schaeffer, The Finished Work of Christ.
In a culture conditioned to instant everything, perhaps we would do well to pause and consider these words from John Newton, author of the hymn Amazing Grace:
“A Christian is not of hasty growth, like a mushroom, but rather like the oak, the progress of which is hardly perceptible, but in time becomes a great deep-rooted tree.”
-from The Letters of John Newton
Here is a thought from J.C. Ryle that transcends the gulf between 19th Century Britain to speak to 21st Century American Evangelicals:
The times require distinct and decided views of Christian doctrine. I cannot withhold my conviction that the professing Church is as much damaged by laxity and indistinctness about matters of doctrine within, as it is by skeptics and unbelievers without. Myriads of professing Christians nowadays seem utterly unable to distinguish things that differ. Like people afflicted with color–blindness, they are incapable of discerning what is true and what is false, what is sound and what is unsound. If a preacher of religion is only clever and eloquent and earnest, they appear to think he is all right, however strange and heterogeneous his sermons may be. They are destitute of spiritual sense, apparently, and cannot detect error. The only positive thing about them is that they dislike distinctiveness and think all extreme and decided and positive views are very naughty and very wrong!
These people live in a kind of mist or fog. They see things unclearly, and do not know what they believe. They have not made up their minds about any great point in the Gospel, and seem content to be honorary members of all schools of thought. For their lives they could not tell you what they think is truth about justification, or regeneration, or sanctification, or the Lord’s Supper, or baptism, or faith or conversion, or inspiration, or the future state. They are eaten up with a morbid dread of controversy and an ignorant dislike of party spirit; and yet they really cannot define what they mean by these phrases. And so they live on undecided; and too often undecided; they drift down to the grave, without comfort in their religion, and, I am afraid, often without hope.
The explanation of this boneless, nerveless, jelly–fish condition of soul is not difficult to find. To begin with, the heart of man is naturally in the dark about religion – has no intuitive sense of truth – and really needs instruction and illumination. Besides this, the natural heart in most men hates exertion in religion, and cordially dislikes patient, painstaking inquiry. Above all, the natural heart generally likes the praise of others, shrinks from collision, and loves to be thought charitable and liberal. The whole result is that a kind of broad religious “agnosticism” just suits an immense number of people, and specially suits young persons. They are content to shovel aside all disputed points as rubbish, and if you charge them with indecision, they will tell you: “I do not pretend to understand controversy; I decline to examine controverted points. I dare say it is all the same in the long run” – Who does not know that such people swarm and abound everywhere?
Now I do beseech all to beware of this undecided state of mind in religion. It is a pestilence which walks in darkness, and a destruction that wastes at noonday. It is a lazy, idle frame of soul which, doubtless, saves man the trouble of thought and investigation but it is a frame of soul for which there is no warrant in the Bible. For your own soul’s sake, dare to make up your mind what you believe, and dare to have positive, distinct views of truth and error. Never, never be afraid to hold decided doctrinal opinions; and let no fear of man and no morbid dread of being thought party–spirited, narrow, or controversial, make you rest contented with a bloodless, boneless, tasteless, colorless, lukewarm, undogmatic Christianity.
Mark what I say. If you want to do good in these times, you must throw aside indecision, and take up a distinct, sharply–cut, doctrinal religion. If you believe little, those to whom you try to do good will believe nothing. The victories of Christianity, wherever they have been won, have been won by distinct doctrinal theology; by telling men roundly of Christ’s vicarious death and sacrifice; by showing them Christ’s substitution on the cross, and His precious blood; by teaching them justification by faith, and bidding them believe on a crucified Savior; by preaching ruin by sin, redemption by Christ, regeneration by the Spirit; by lifting up the brazen serpent; by telling them to look and live – to believe, repent, and be converted. This – this is the only teaching which for centuries God had honored with success, and is honoring at the present day both at home and abroad.
It is doctrine – doctrine, clear, ringing doctrine which, like the ram’s horn at Jericho casts down the opposition of the devil and sin. Let us cling to decided doctrinal views, whatever some may please to say in these times, and we shall do well for ourselves, well for others, and well for Christ’s cause in the world.
Here is a challenging insight from Robert Benson, taken from his book In Constant Prayer:
Our modern church has some distinct advantages over the early church. Or at least I suspect it does. We have better youth programs and better acoustics and finer buildings. We have better literature that is more easily available to our flocks, most of whom happen to be literate. We have some pretty fair preachers, or at least we have some who are more fun to listen to than the blessed Saint Augustine. (Have you ever actually attempted to read Augustine?)
We have better choirs, I suspect, and we can put on a Sunday morning service with more art and more dignity and more beauty than ever before. We have mailing lists and newsletters and Web sites. We have educational buildings and discipleship classes and Bible study groups where students bring their own Bibles. We have Sunday School buses and youth lock-ins and Christian rock-and-roll bands.
What we do not have so much of sometimes, it seems to me, is the depth of spirit and of devotion and of piety – now, there is a scary word – that marked the life of the faithful in the hundreds and thousands of years before us, the centuries that produced the Church we built our buildings and programs around in the first place.
It is worth noting, I believe, that this tradition of daily prayer is one of the practices our modern church does not do that the ancient Church did. We preach sermons, study the Scriptures, gather to worship on the Sabbath, teach our children the faith, and fellowship with one another – but we do not say our prayers.
The gospel is always conveyed through the medium of culture. It becomes good news to lost and broken humanity as it is incarnated in the world through God’s sent people, the church. To be faithful to its calling, the church must be contextual, that is, it must be culturally relevant within a specific setting. The church relates constantly and dynamically both to the Gospel and to its contextual reality. …In order to contextualize responsibly, the church must assess its culture critically, discerning and unmasking its philosophical foundations and values.
– Craig Van Gelder, in Missional Church
I received this quote from my friends at Graced Again. The author, Bob Flayhart, is minister at Oak Mountain Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, AL.
A Gospel-centered life is the Christian Waltz. A waltz is a dance made up of three steps. Christians need to consider the Christian three step when it comes to growth.
In the first step, we acknowledge our need as we see our sin in light of the Law. In the second step, we look to Christ to change us. In the third step, we fight against sin and fight to choose righteousness in the strength of the Holy Spirit. Repent! Believe! Fight!…Repent! Believe! Fight!…Repent! Believe! Fight!
An emphasis on the love and grace of God lays the dance floor,or the foundation, for the waltz. Unless Christians are convinced of God’s love for them and His favor over them by virtue of their union with Christ, they will minimize their sin and engage in blame-shifting and excuse- making in order to feel justified before God.
Unfortunately, many in the Church today teach believers a Two-step. The two-step is to simply repent and fight. They acknowledge their sin and proceed with new resolve to try harder to avoid sin. The problem with this approach is it bypasses the cross of Christ and the power of the resurrection. -Bob Flayhart
This was such a good insight and great illustration I wanted to post the whole thing rather than just the link. But check out Graced Again and subscribe to their weekly e-mail. They regulalrly provide thought provoking and insightful quotes.
To doubt the good will of God is an inborn suspicion of God with all of us.
Besides, the devil…goes about seeking to devour us by roaring: ‘God is angry at you and is going to destroy you forever.’
In all these difficulties we have only one support, the Gospel of Christ. To hold on to it, that is the trick.
Christ cannot be perceived with the senses…
The heart does not feel His helpful presence…
Especially in times of trials a Christian feels the power of sin, the infirmity of his flesh, the goading darts of the devil…the scowl and judgment of God. All these things cry out against us, death thunders at us, the devil roars at us.
In the midst of the clamor the Spirit of Christ cries in our hearts, ‘Abba, Father.’
And this little cry of the Spirit transcends the hullabaloo of the Law, sin, death, and the devil, and finds a hearing with God. The Spirit cries because of our weakness…(and) is sent forth into our hearts…to assure us of the grace of God.”
– Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians
Here is a helpful insight from D.A. Carson, in his book For the Love of God, that reminds us that while, as Christians, we are Justified and freely forgiven by God through Faith alone in Christ alone, we grow in Spiritual maturity by God’s grace AND our diligent faithfulness:
People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
A sobering reminder to avail ourselves in the means of grace.
Here is a profound insight from A.A. Hodge:
It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the Truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it.
As Proverbs says:
Many a man claims to have unfailing love, but a faithful man who can find?
The mountain journey is about becoming more aligned with God’s presence and purposes in our lives. …The goal is not the glamour of iridescent light, but Christ-shaped encounters with others. The journey is not about getting out of this world or out of ourselves into some more glamorous place – but about getting as deeply into this world as God, in Christ, has.
-Robert C. Morris, from Riding the Wild Mountain Ox
Christians who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure persons – much less secure than non-Christians, because they have too much light to rest easily under the constant bulletins they receive from their Christian environment about the holiness of God and the righteousness they are supposed to have. Their insecurity shows itself in pride, a fierce defensive assertion of their own righteousness and defensive criticism of others… They cling desperately to legal, pharisaical righteousness, but envy, jealousy and other branches on the tree of sin grow out of their fundamental insecurity…
[I]t is often necessary to convince sinners (even sinful Christians) of the grace and love of God toward them, before we can get them to look at their problems. Then the vision of grace and the sense of God’s forgiving acceptance may actually cure most of the problems.
This may account for Paul’s frequent fusing of justification and sanctification.
~ Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life
[W]e know that prayer is the most important thing for a Christian to do from the example of godly men in history. It can be safely said that there never has been and never will be a truly godly man who does not pray. Godliness and prayerfulness are Siamese twins; never is one without the other.
-Wayne Mack, Reaching the Ear of God
GRACE & PEACE 