He Suffers With You

"He suffers with you. He is as tender in his affections to you as ever he was; that he might be moved to pity you, he is willing to suffer, as it were, one place to be left naked, and to be flesh still, on which he may be wounded with your miseries, that so he might be your merciful high priest. 

And whereas it may be objected, that this were a weakness, the apostle affirms that this is his power, and perfection and strength of love surely, in him; that is, that makes him thus able and powerful to take our miseries into his heart, though glorified, and so to be affected with them, as if he suffered with us, and so to relieve us out of that principle out of which he would relieve himself."

-Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ

Big thanks to Dane Ortlund for pointing me to this gem.

Calvary's Anthem

Heavenly Father,
Though hast led me singing to the cross
Where I fling down all my burdens and see them vanish,
Where my mountains of guilt are leveled to a plain,
Where my sins disappear, though they are the greatest that exist,
and are more in number than the grains of fine sand;

For there is power in the blood of Calvary to destroy sins more than can be counted, even by one from the choir of heaven.
Thou hast given me a hill-side spring that washes clear and white, and I go as a sinner to its waters, bathing without hindrance in its crystal streams.
At the cross there is free forgiveness for poor and meek ones,
And ample blessings that last forever;
The blood of the Lamb is like a great river of infinite grace with never any diminishing of its fullness as thirsty ones without number drink of it.

-an excerpt from The Valley of Vision

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

Rest

"If you try to seize the day, the day will eventually break you. Rather, seize the corner of His garment."

Paul Miller

A Marker of Healthy Theology

All too often those in the reformed circles get the reputation of the stuffy, stodgy, cantankerous curmudgeon who is chomping at the bit for any opportunity to beat people over the head with a doctrinal bat. Unfortunately, that reputation exists for a reason. I see that in myself as well as others. While robust doctrine is absolutely necessary to live lives pleasing to God, it derails when we use it to drive unnecessary wedges in the body of Christ.

In George Marsden's biography of Jonathan Edwards, he explains how Edwards (usually the Superman of the reformed circles) held tightly to particular and confessional convictions while simultaneously yearning for unity in thought and deed in the church.

This, I'm convinced, is a marker of healthy theology.

"Edwards' call for peace was so strong that he sounded almost like one of Boston's Calvinist moderates.

 'The gospel spirit is a catholic spirit, a noble and unconfined benevolence, like unto that of our Creator, not confined to any particular part of mankind exclusive of others...To make the wickedness of men the cause of contention and strife in us, is to make one sin the cause of another. We cannot please the devil better than by hating men's personals under pretense of duty.'

Even doctrinal differences are no excuse for hatred. People can not help what they believe.

'Tis as unreasonable to strive with others because they can't be in everything of our minds, as to quarrel with another because he differs in the color of his hair or the features of his face...However pernicious his tenets, yet we ought, as much as in us lies, to endeavor to live peaceably with him.'"

Joy

"My sin in the past: forgiven. My current struggles: covered. My future failures: paid in full all by the marvelous, infinite, matchless grace found in the atoning work of the cross of Jesus Christ."


Chandler, Explicit Gospel. p.15

The Father's Cup (Good Friday)

The Father's Cup (Good Friday)

If anything scroll to the bottom starting at "The Father speaks..."

Praise Jesus.

Forever Forgiven

From Sam Storms' meditations on Colossians, The Hope of Glory...#20, p.72...

"God has taken your sin and placed it out of sight behind his back. All he sees now when he sees you is the blessed righteousness of his own dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Such is the love of forgiveness.

Still not good enough? Still not convinced? Still afraid that your sins will do you in? Then pay close attention to the word of the prophet Micah...He has something important to say about the kind of God we have:

 "Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea" (Mic. 7:18-19).

How much more graphic do you demand God to be before you enter into the joy of his forgiving love? All vestige of condemning guilt is gone. Again, "just as God said he put our sins behind his back, so here he says he will hurl them into the depths of the sea. They will not 'fall overboard' ; God will hurl them into the depths. he wants them to be lost forever, because he has fully dealt with them in his Son, Jesus Christ."

Union

So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: "I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where he is there I shall be also!"


-Luther

Jesus: The End to Anxiety

Calvin famously assessed the nature of our human hearts by noting they are "factories of idols." Idolatry is essentially believing in other things to save us, and a functional disbelief in Jesus' salvific accomplishment at the cross. With this disbelief in Christ comes and overwhelming sense of anxiety. Transitively, one could then say, the human heart is a factory of anxiety--functional disbelief.

This manifests itself in so many ways. Those daily, repetitive, pestering questions of the sin-sick soul--"Am I good enough? How do I measure up to everyone around me? What do people think of me? Where the heck is my life going right now? What does the future hold? When am I going to meet the woman/man I will eventually marry? Am I being a good husband? Father? Wife? Mother? Where is my ministry going? Will it be successful? How will my finances ever work themselves out? Am I OK? 

Endless. Tiresome. Frenetic. On edge. Restless. Weary. Frustrated.

The festering angst of our souls finds storm quelling rest and peace in 2 Cor. 1:20 

"For all the promises of God find their Yes in him."

No matter what our past, present, or future holds, we have the approval from the only source that matters. In Jesus, we already have whatever we think we need to be OK. All of our life questions become of little significance in comparison to the soul-satisfying Yes we have in Jesus.

Hymn

Well may the accuser roar, of sins that I have done;

I know them all and thousands more, Jehovah knoweth none!

Complete

"Nothing either great or small,
      Nothing, sinner, no;
Jesus did it, did it all,
      Long, long ago.
"It is finished!" yes, indeed,
      Finished every jot;
Sinner, this is all you need;
      Tell me, is it not?
Cast your deadly doing down,
      Down at Jesus' feet;
Stand in Him, in Him alone,
      Gloriously complete."

-James Proctor

Focus Shift

"The moment the focus of your life shifts from your badness to his goodness, and the question becomes not 'what have I done' but 'what can he do?'-- release from remorse happens. Miracle of miracles, you can forgive yourself because you are forgiven, accept yourself because you are accepted, and begin to start building up the very places you once tore down. There is grace to help in every time of trouble. That grace is the secret to begin able to forgive ourselves. Trust it."

Ragamuffin Gospel, p.117-118

Freedom

Tullian Tchividjian:

The gospel frees us from this pressure to perform, this slavish demand to “become.” The gospel liberatingly declares that in Christ “we already are.” If you’re a Christian, here’s the good news: Who you really are has nothing to do with you—how much you can accomplish, who you can become, your behavior (good or bad), your strengths, your weaknesses, your sordid past, your family background, your education, your looks, and so on.

Your identity is firmly anchored in Christ’s accomplishment, not yours; his strength, not yours; his performance, not yours; his victory, not yours. Your identity is steadfastly established in his substitution, not your sin.

Edwards on the Loveliness of Heaven

Per Kevin Deyoung

The Apostle tells us that God is love, 1 John 4:8. And therefore seeing he is an infinite Being, it follows that he is an infinite fountain of love, Seeing he is an all-sufficient Being, it follows that he is a full and overflowing and an inexhaustible fountain of love. Seeing he is an unchangeable and eternal Being, he is an unchangeable and eternal source of love. There even in heaven dwells that God from whom every stream of holy love, yea, every drop that is or ever was proceeds.

There dwells Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, the Prince of peace and love, who so loved the world that he shed his blood, and poured out his soul unto death for it. There dwells the Mediator, by whom all God’s love is expressed to the saints, by whom the fruits of it have been purchased, and through whom they are communicated, and through whom love is imparted to the hearts of all the church. There Christ dwells in both his natures, his human and divine, sitting with the Father in the same throne.

There in heaven this fountain of love, this eternal three in one, is set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it. There this glorious God is manifested and shines forth in full glory, in beams of love; there the fountain overflows in streams and rivers of love and delight, enough for all to drink at, and to swim in, yea, so as to overflow the world as it were with a deluge of love. (The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, 245)

Too Good Not To Repost

King's Cross. Chapter 5. The Power.

Keller, commenting on Mark 4:35-41


"Jesus says, 'One greater than Jonah is here,' and he's referring to himself: I'm the true Jonah. He meant this: Someday I'm going to calm all storms, still all waves. I'm going to destroy destruction, break brokenness, kill death. how can he do that? He can do it only because when he was on the cross he was thrown--willingly, like Jonah--into the ultimate storm, under the ultimate waves, the waves of sin and death. Jesus was thrown into the only storm that can actually sink us--the storm of eternal justice, of what we owe for our wrongdoing. that storm wasn't calmed--not until it swept him away.

If the sight of Jesus bowing his head into that ultimate storm is burned into the core of your being, you will never say, 'God, don't you care?' And if you know that he did not abandon you in that ultimate storm, what makes you think he would abandon you in the much smaller storms you're experiencing right now? And, someday, of course, he will return and still all storms for eternity. 


If you let that penetrate to the very center of your being, you will know he loves you. You will know he cares. And then you will have the power to handle anything in life with poise." (p. 57-58, my emphasis)


In the middle of any storm, even the most tempestuous hurricane, he is infinitely more powerful. He can, has, and will subdue the storm like a compliant child. In the midst of my storms, I have him, and he is more than enough. 

A Strange Melancholy

Alexis de Tocqueville was a French aristocrat who lived in the 1800s. He was known as a political thinker, and his most famous work was Democracy in America. During his investigations of America and its political structure, he noted the following, as quoted in Tim Keller's Counterfeit Gods.

"A strange melancholy that haunts the inhabitants...in the midst of abundance..."

About one hundred years later C.S. Lewis stumbled upon the same conclusion:

"There is something we have grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality..." 

de Tocqueville concludes:

"the incomplete joys of this world will never satisfy the human heart."

And Lewis, simply and famously:

"something has evaded us."

Colossians 3:1-5 - Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.

Incomplete joys. idolatry. Anything can be an idol, and just about everything has been. Its usually the best things that are.

Keller on rooting out our idols:

Idolatry is not just a failure to obey God, it is a setting of the whole heart on something besides God.   This cannot be remedied only by repenting that you have an idol, or using willpower to try to live differently. Turning from idols is not less than those two things, but it is also far more. 'setting the mind and heart on things above' where 'your life is hid with Christ in God' means appreciation, rejoicing, and resting in what Jesus has done for you. It entails joyful worship, a sense of God's reality in prayer. Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol.

Keller on Jonah and Jesus

Keller on Jonah and Jesus

Everyone should read this post, and this upcoming book. And the Bible.

My Heart Is Filled with Thankfulness

Came across this in church this morning. Peace to my soul.

Col 2:6-7 - "Let your lives overflow with thanksgiving for all he has done."


My heart is filled with thankfulness to him who bore my pain; who plumbed the depths of my disgrace and gave me life again; who crushed my curse of sinfulness, and clothed me in his light, and wrote his law of righteousness with pow'r upon my heart

My heart is filled with thankfulness to him who walks beside; who floods my weaknesses with strength and causes fear to fly; whose every promise is enough for every step I take; sustaining me with arms of love and crowning me with grace.

My heart is filled with thankfulness to him who reigns above; whose wisdom is my perfect peace, whose every thought is love. For every day I have on earth is given by the King. So I will give my life, my all, to love and follow him.

Why I'm Thinking of Naming My First Son Isaiah

In reading the ESV Study Bible's introduction to Isaiah, the key themes as summarized by Ray Ortlund opened my eyes to the beauty of the book. Isaiah's name means literally "Yahweh is salvation"

Key themes (for the sake of brevity, just a few)

1. God is offended by religious ritual, however impressive, if it conceals an empty heart and a careless life (1:10-17, 58:1-12, 66:1-4)
2. God's true people will become a multination community of worship and peace forever (2:2-4,19:19-25, 25:6-9, 56:3-8, 66:18-23)
3. God opposes all manifestations of human pride (2:10-17, 10:33-34, 13:11, 16:6, 23:9, 28:1-4)
4. Though God's judgment will reduce his people to a remnant, his final purpose is the joyful triumph of his grace (1:9, 6:1-12:6, 35:1-10, 40:1-2, 49:13-16, 51:3, 54:7-8, 55:12-13)
5. The only hope of the world is bound up in one man--the promised Davidic king (4:2, 7:14, 9:2-7, 11:1-10), the lone victor over all evil (63:1-6)

Still gotta find a girl, but ill let you know when little Isaiah is on the way