The Good Portion

Last night Paul and I came home from Sunday Evening Bible Study and spent the next couple of hours discussing feeling stuck - well, me feeling stuck. Those weren't the words I used exactly, but that's the jist of it. I feel as if in my quest for sanctification and Christlikeness, I've reached a stalemate. I have certain attitudes that cause me no end of trouble. I pray, I read Scripture, I rebuke them, I replace them with proper attitudes. But back they come. It's like that wacky arcade game where the bug heads pop up and you're supposed to wack them with mallets before they duck back down. But this game is not fun, and if I miss the nasty bugs people around me get hurt. This is why I found such great comfort in the quote I posted in my previous blog entry: “The longer I live the less optimistic I am that I will end without sin and the more grateful I become for the blood of Christ imputed to me. As I grow older I do not feel myself becoming gloriously holy ...

“The longer I live the less optimistic I am that I will end without sin and the more grateful I become for the blood of Christ imputed to me. As I grow older I do not feel myself becoming gloriously holy but I find myself feeling great love for the gospel.” - John Piper, in a message given at the re:Focus pastors conference

"The church, by and large, has had a poor record of encouraging freedom. She has spent so much time inculcating in us the fear of making mistakes, that she has made us like ill-taught piano students: we play our songs, but we never really hear them because our main concern is not to make music but to avoid some flub that will get us in dutch." Robert Capon I can't tell you how true this has often been of my church life. And by church life I don't only mean when I participate in an official church function. I also include my interaction with other Christians in any forum, including informal get-togethers, my blog and other internet discussions. What starts off as a desire not to offend turns into a prison - with the easily offended standing as guards - the "weaker brother" holding the keys. There's a name for what happens when the weak run the church: Legalism. I feel I can say this, because I've been this person, and felt the curse of legalism,...

The following is another installment in the series Reading the Classics Together - The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. I'll try to make each post readable on its own, however I highly encourage your own study of this Puritan classic by Jeremiah Burroughs. In Chapter Two, Point Four, Burroughs states that one of the ways by which a Christian finds contentment is “not so much the removing of the affliction...as the changing of the affliction, the metamorphosing of the affliction, so that it is quite turned and changed into something else.” He says, “There is a power of grace to turn this affliction into good; it takes away the sting and poison of it....You do not find one godly man who came out of an affliction worse than when he went into it; though for a while he was shaken, yet at last he was better for an affliction. But a great many godly men, you find, have been worse for their prosperity.” These are certainly points we do well to remember during these tough economic t...

"The following is the next installment in the series Reading the Classics Together - The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. I'll try to make each post readable on its own, however I highly encourage your own study of this Puritan classic by Jeremiah Burroughs. In the next two chapters Burroughs sets about unpacking what he refers to as “The Mystery of Contentment”. As he says, “to be thoroughly sensible of an affliction and to endeavor to remove it by all lawful means, and yet to be content; there is a mystery in that.” As I read, I was over and over made aware of how impossible this deep contentment would be apart from the grace of God – and also how positively ludicrous most of these concepts would seem to an unbeliever. Some of the ideas will no doubt seem foreign to our post-modern, easy listening, prosperity minded American evangelical minds. Some of the concepts will rub us the wrong way simply because they reveal our sin, and cause conviction, discomfort, defen...

“Be content to be nothing, for that is what you are. When your own emptiness is painfully forced upon your consciousness, chide yourself that you ever dreamed of being full, except in the Lord.” - Charles Spurgeon

I found this in my e-mail this morning. I hope you will take a moment not just to read it, but to meditate upon it. “Christian exultation in God begins with the shamefaced recognition that we have no claim on him at all, continues with wondering worship that while we were still sinners and enemies Christ died for us, and ends with the humble confidence that he will complete the work he has begun. So to exult in God is to rejoice not in our privileges but in his mercies, not in our possession of him but in his of us.” — John Stott , The Message of Romans (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press , 1994), 147-48

I've got to leave for work in five minutes, but I found this in my morning reading and wanted to share it before I forgot. "Nothing makes people in the church more angry than grace. It's ironic: we stumble into a party we weren't invited to and find the uninvited standing at the door making sure no other uninviteds get in. Then a strange phenomenon occurs: as soon as we are included in the party because of Jesus' irresponsible love, we decide to make grace 'more responsible' by becoming self-appointed Kingdom Monitors, guarding the kingdom of God, keeping the riffraff out (which, as I understand it are who the kingdom of God is supposed to include.)" Michael Yaconelli in Messy Spirituality, God's annoying love for imperfect people

The following is the next installment in the series Reading the Classics Together - The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. I'll try to make each post readable on its own, however I highly encourage your own study of this Puritan classic by Jeremiah Burroughs. In looking over the last part of Chapter One and the first part of Chapter Two I found there were two concepts that I think are altogether the most difficult. But I also I think they are also among the most important for us to grasp. Indeed they contain the key to gaining that one thing that can truly satisfy the godly person’s heart. And so I've decided to single them out for a post of their own. Difficult Concept 1: Back in Chapter One we learned that the Christian kind of contentment submits to God’s disposal, but not only that, it takes pleasure in God’s disposal , no matter what that may happen to involve. The hard question is: “How can a person find pleasure in God’s dealings when there’s nothing seemi...

“The gospel . . . is the wisdom of God because it doesn’t praise our intellects or advertise our strengths. It causes us to fall on our knees and acknowledge our weakness, our dependence, our terrible need. It causes us to look up to God as the great Savior. ‘It is by his doing that we are in Christ Jesus’ . . .. The gospel teaches us that our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption, and our wisdom are all gifts of God. The message of the gospel scuttles human pride because it reminds us that our life did not start with our choosing God but his choosing us. Therefore, all the glory is God’s.” - Thomas Schreiner, “The Foolishness of the Cross” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology (Fall 2002) "For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God cho...

The following is the next installment in the series Reading the Classics Together - The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment edition. I'll try to make each post readable on its own, however I highly encourage your own study of this Puritan classic by Jeremiah Burroughs. It is a great thing to think, with all the promises that we may not see fulfilled until we enter eternity, and the understanding that we will not reach sinless perfection until that time, that there are some Christian graces which we really can achieve in this life. Contentment is one of them. The apostle Paul tells us in Phil. 4:11, "I have learned it". As Burroughs expands: "I do not have to learn it now, nor did I have the art at first; I have attained it, though with much ado, and now, by the grace of God, I have become the master of this art." We can and should take great hope in Paul’s statement that he has learned how to be content. In this we see that this is something possible fo...

As part of my participation in an on-line reading of Jeremiah Burroughs' Puritan classic, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment , I've been doing a review of my notes from the study I led through that work last year. Some of my introductory information is not directly related to the reading, but foundational and, I think, helpful. Because Burroughs was one of the Westminster divines, I think it appropriate to begin with a quote from the Westminster Catechism to gain some insight into our understanding of contentment: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever” Certainly we cannot expect to experience Christian contentment apart from fulfilling the purpose for which we were created. What does it mean to glorify God? And how can we enjoy Him? Well, among other things, it means to show forth His glory - as the moon shines back the reflected light of the sun, or a mirror reflects back the light and image of the one who gazes into it. We glorify God as we i...

Last year I led a study through the Puritan Classic, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment , by Jeremiah Burroughs. It was one of the most challenging and fruitful endeavors I've ever undertaken. Contentment is a fairly unique aspect of godliness in that we are assured by at least one mere human in Scripture that it is actually achievable in this life. The apostle Paul says, in Philippians 4:11, " I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content." He claims to have succeeded in learning it, and I can testify that it is possible. I've learned it as well. I know how to be content. Now, I'd like to think after all that study and practice that I'll never fail to be content, but as with any other virtue, the world around me and the sin within me seeks to snuff it out. The habit of contentment, like any good habit once it is established, is maintained by nurture and reinforcement. Years ago I was a driving instructor by trade (yes, the kind that ...

“Don’t slack off seeking, striving, and praying for the very same things that we exhort unconverted people to strive for, and a degree of which you have had in conversion. Thus pray that your eyes may be opened, that you may receive sight, that you may know your self and be brought to God’s feet, and that you may see the glory of God and Christ, may be raised from the dead, and have the love of Christ shed abroad in your heart. Those that have most of these things still need to pray for them; for there so much blindness and hardness and pride and death remaining that they still need to have that work of God upon them, further to enlighten and enliven them. This will be a further bringing out of darkness into God’s marvelous light, and a kind of new conversion..." Jonathan Edwards, Advice to Young Converts . Ht to http://www.gracedagain.com "But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ...

I've just finished Bainton's biography of Martin Luther, Here I Stand, a Life of Martin Luther . It was an excellent, entertaining, and devotional read, not only informative but thought-provoking and faith-inspiring. But before I move on to another project I'd like to linger here a bit longer and let the lessons I've learned from Luther settle in a bit. For today I'd like to dwell on his legacy of prayer. Luther was much better known in his day as a man of prayer than he is remembered now. The fact that we have very little record of his prayers is not testimony to a lack of prayer but to the sacredness with which he held the prayer closet. He did not permit his students, who would have recorded him, access to his "secret chamber". We can get an idea, however, of the nature of his prayers from his own teaching on the Lord's Prayer. I suggest that as you read these excerpts from his exposition you ponder them and take them for your own. See if you c...

I'm a bit sad to find that I'm nearing the end of Roland Bainton's biography of Martin Luther, Here I Stand; a life of Martin Luther . I would say I will miss him; but I have another biographical work on Luther yet unread to turn to later. For now I'm reflecting on his legacy in various spheres of ecclesiastical life - music for one. With Luther, music took a more prominent place in the church. While some in the Reformation, Zwingli for instance, would have it relegated to strictly to secular life, Luther felt it should remain an integral part of the liturgy and even took it beyond its common use which was "almost entirely restricted to the celebrant and the choir." In Bainton's opinion, Luther "may be considered the father of congregational song. This was the point at which his doctrine of the priesthood of all believers received its most concrete realization. This was the point and the only point at which Lutheranism was thoroughly democratic. ...