Zack Eswine on Significance in the Ordinary

Zack Eswine on Significance in the Ordinary from Crossway on Vimeo.

Armstrong, Livestrong, Die Stronger

Lance. Big surprise? Um, No.

Baseball: Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Canseco, Petite, A-Rod, Clemens, their mothers, and their dogs.
Football: Spygate, Bounty Hunting, Brett Favre's cellular indiscretion, Vick and the aforementioned HGH dogs .
Golf: Tiger.
Basketball.
This guy

(ps. government too!)

As earth orbits the sun, so do professional athletes orbit scandal--they cannot elude its inescapable gravitational pull. Don't believe me? Watch Sportscenter for a week.

But now that performance enhancing drugs have since devoured Floyd Landis and latched their tentacles around cycling's golden boy, the public reaction has taken on a particular flavor. The public has taken two distinct sides. The Armstrong's cry fraudulent disqualification, the Livestrong's proclaim result-driven qualification. Neither will suffice. In times of blatant failure (defiant in Lance's case), only dying stronger than you "armstrong" or "livestrong" will suffice.

Armstrong
Public outrage is climaxing at this point. After years and years of scathing, indignant refutation, Lance finally admitted to what he so vehemently denied for at least a decade. As with the rest of our athletes who have fallen so far off the pedestal we insist on elevating them to, Lance's heart has proved to be black. And the public is ready to exile him. Strip the jerseys! Remove the medals! Exterminate the awards! Impeach him from his nonprofit! CONDEMN HIM. Rick Reilly, an ESPN sports columnist and close friend of Armstrong who defended Lance the past decade, outright rejects Lance's personal apology and condemns him by publicly and permanently burning the bridge they so freely traversed in the past. "It does not matter what he's done," the Armstrong's say. "On the inside he's a liar and a cheat, and he's disqualified!"

Livestrong
In the midst of disqualifying accusations, there's a murmuring of those who say, "Hold on a sec, he still qualifies. Look what he's done for cancer. Look what he's done for the sport. He's been such an inspiration!" One tweet reads, "Beat cancer, raise millions of dollars for cancer research, bring back a dead sport, then judge Lance #Armstrong. People piss me off." 55 million wristbands! Millions and millions of dollars for research! "It doesn't matter what he's like on the inside," the Livestrong's say. "It's the external that qualifies this man! Look at all he's done!"

Here's the problem: According to the public, Lance has fallen so far and so fast that there is absolutely nothing he can do to rid him of this permanent and career-wrecking stain. The internal condemnation is thick and heavy and it is not going anywhere. Additionally, the external can clearly do no good in transforming the internal. Lance ran his Livestrong campaign brilliantly while doping with EPO for all 7 Tour de France victories. Polished and sparkly outside, moral decay inside. The yellow wrist band I bought in 4th grade can't change Lance's heart. At least everyone thought I was cool.

So it seems that when we judge others and ourselves, we go one of two options:

1. We recognize we don't measure up. We see that we're total failures. We drown in the cesspools of guilt created by our moral failure. We convince ourselves that we are unlovable. We collapse under the weight of condemnation, and cling to anything we can get our hands on in a vain attempt to pawn off the perpetual weight of ongoing failure. When we find out others are just as bad or even worse than us (based on our own faulty perception of morality), we make sure we drag others down with us. With an undeserved pat on the shoulder and a fake fleeting smile, we leap frog ourselves up a rung on the moral ladder. "At least I'm not as bad as Lance! He's horrible! I'd never do that!"

2. We think we do measure up. We fight and claw for a pristine moral portfolio to present to God and to others, and insist that they accept us. The external justifies the internal. "I'm a pretty good person. I don't lie, cheat or steal. I'm not a murderer or a rapist." When others are caught in a scandal (especially in a scandal we ourselves could be guilty of), we fight for their external records. We do this because by fighting for their external qualifications, we're actually fighting for our own.

Die Stronger
There's always a 3rd way isn't there? Scripture doesn't leave us with either of these options. Road blocks both ways. The Bible tells us to ditch ourselves entirely. Death to self, life in Christ. The imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ simultaneously rescues us from our self-loathing, and deflates the limp balloon of our self-righteousness. Christ forbids our despair and scoffs at our efforts to measure up. There are no options of self left.

"For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him" (Romans 6:5-8) 

We ask frenetically with word and deed our entire lives, "How do I qualify??" As my friend answers, "Know you don't." As Tim Keller says, "The gospel is this: we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope."

It is time to decisively push off shore from our tit-for-tat legalism and self-atoning that has been unfortunately familiar to us our entire lives. We don't sulk in abject despair. Nor do we run the unending race of moral manipulation. We fling ourselves overboard the USS Self entirely, and cling to the only Vessel capable of navigating the tempestuous seas of despair, confusion, desperation, frustration, pain, disappointment, anxiety, fear, sin, and death. The liberating power of the gospel is that our qualification no longer has anything to do with us. Our spiritual portfolios are filled with the riches of Christ. We're invited to joyfully jump off the cliff of safe moralism. The world says it's death. They're playing it safe. Risk is good. Jump. Christ is all. "Hallelujah, all I have is Christ. Hallelujah, Jesus is my life."

Will Not Let Us Go

George Whitefield:

"Nothing could possibly support my soul under the many agonies which oppressed me when on board, except a consideration of the freeness, eternity, and unchangeableness of God's love to me.

I need not fear the sight of sin when I have a perfect, everlasting righteousness wrought out for me by Jesus Christ....

May he enlighten me more and more to know and feel the mystery of his electing, soul-transforming love. There is nothing like it, to support us under present and all the various future trials. But the Lord has apprehended us and will not let us go. Men and devils may do their worst; our Jesus will allow nothing to pluck us out of His Almighty hands."

HT: Dane Ortlund

'You Are The Very Person'

Spurgeon:

I have no gospel to preach to the self-righteous, no, not a word, Jesus Christ Himself came not to call the righteous, and i am not going to do what he did not do, No, I ask you rather to look at that righteousness of yours till you see what a delusion it is. It is not half so substantial as a cobweb. Be finished with it! Flee it!

"They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick" (Mark 2:17). Is it not equally clear that the great remedies of grace and redemption are for the sick in soul? They cannot be for the whole, for they cannot be of use to such. If you feel that you are spiritually sick, the Physician has come into the world for you. If you are altogether undone by reason of your sin, you are the very person aimed at in the plan of salvation. I say that the Lord of love had precisely such as you in his eye when he arranged the system of grace.

He that is a dirty sinner is the kind of man that Jesus Christ came to make clean, Come in your disorder. Come to your heavenly Father in all your sin and sinfulness. come to Jesus just as you are: leprous, filthy, naked. Come, though despair is brooding over you, pressing upon your chest like a horrible nightmare.

-All of Grace

.....

That is a shot of joyful hope for sleepy souls such as mine.

"You No Longer Have to Spend the Rest of Your Life Chasing Your Tail"

Microscopic vs. Telescopic Worship

"But there are two entirely different ways of magnifying God, one of which exalts him and the other demeans him. First, you can magnify God the way a microscope does by focusing on something quite small, most often invisible to the naked eye, and causing it to look much, much, bigger than it really is. this is magnification by distortion! This is not how we are to magnify God! Tragically though, that's how many Christians think of God and how they are to worship him. They think that in their lives and in their prayers and in their praise they are causing God to look bigger and greater and more glorious than he really is, in and of himself. Worship is not like blowing up a balloon. God is not honored by human inflation, as if the breath of our praise enhances and expands his visibility and worth. To think that apart from our praise God remains shrunken and shriveled is to dishonor him who "gives to all mankind life and breath and everything" (Acts 17:25).

But you can also magnify God the way a telescope would. A telescope helps people who are small and distant to see something indescribably huge and massive by making it to appear as it really and truly is. A telescope peers into the distant realms of our universe and displays before our eyes the massive, unfathomable, indescribable dimensions of what is there. Only in this latter sense are we called to magnify the Lord."

Sam Storms, For the Fame of God's Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper. p.58

I Want This

Marsden, commenting on the glories of God revealed to Edwards...

"The new sensibilities grew during the spring. As he wandered in the fields, woods, and hills near New Haven for his meditations he repeatedly saw the glory and beauty of God's love in Christ. He experienced an 'inward sweet sense' of Christ's love expressed in 'the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him.' He spent much time reading the love poetry of the Canticles or Song of Songs

..."The words seemed to me, sweetly to represent the loveliness and beauty of Jesus Christ." Such contemplations would carry him away 'from all the concerns of the world' into 'a kind of vision...sweetly conversing with Christ, and wrapped and swallowed up in God.' This new sense of divine things 'would often of a sudden as it were, kindle up a sweet buying in my heart; an ardor of my soul, that i know not how to express.'

What overwhelmed him was two seemingly opposite attributes of the triune God "in a sweet conjunction: majesty and meekness joined together: it was a sweet and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness."


...I'll have what he's having.

Galatians 1:15-16; Jude 1:24

Galatians 1:15-16 "But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles...

Jude 24 "Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy..."

It brings the Father pleasure and joy to both unite us with his son Jesus and present us as blameless before his glory. blameless. He's looking down on us in spite of all our screwiness, all our deficiency, all our lacking, all our frustration and insecurity, our confusion and shortsightedness, with pleasure and joy because of Christ. God delights in saving us.

Hallelujah, All I Have Is Christ

Hebrews 4:14-16

"Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

Hallelujah, Jesus is my life.

Augustine's Prayer

"O God, command what you will, and grant what you command"

Valley of Vision - "The Spirit's Work"

Help me to find in his death the reality and immensity of his love.
Open for me the wondrous volumes of truth in his, 'It is finished'.
Increase my faith in the clear knowledge of
     atonement achieved,
     expiation completed,
     satisfaction made,
     guilt done away,
     my debt paid,
     my sins forgiven,
     my person redeemed,
     my soul saved,
     hell vanquished,
     heaven opened,
     eternity made mine.
O Holy Spirit, deepen in me these saving lessons.
Write them upon my heart.


.........I agree with the puritan