The Good Portion

"Don't look back; you're not going that way." Social media loves wisdom memes like this. And this is a good one, so far as it goes.  The apostle Paul said, " But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I  press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3.13b) ....forgetting what lies behind...."  he says after spending the preceding paragraph recounting all the things in his past he was once proud of. He hasn't forgotten anything.  Paul is talking about a forgetting in different way, a way that fully understands the import of the past, that clings to the truth of it and the wisdom gained from it, but leaves behind its vanity, foolishness, and sin. “...then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”  ‭‭Deut.‬ ‭ 6:12 ‬‬ Wisdom looks back and remembers the faithfulness and merc...

How can we experience Christ? I've heard a lot of ideas about that over the years. But it wasn't until I slowed down and listened carefully to Paul's prayer for the Ephesian church that I saw something I'd never seen before. Paul prayed, among other things, that they would know: "...what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints..." Eph. 1.18 Where are the riches of Christ? Where is His glorious inheritance? "in the saints" That's me and you. We Christians are his riches. We, the church, are his inheritance, his treasure.  In the next sentence Paul tells us that the church is Christ's b ody, "the fullness of him who fills all in all." Eph.1.23 Where do we go to  experience the fullness of Christ?   All of Christ's riches, all of his energy and resurrection power are invested in one place, his body, the congregation of his people.  There is nowhere else to go to live in his fullness but to...

He spoke to them in parables all day before setting out to sea. Those of his disciples who were fishermen by trade manned the helm while he lay down for a much needed rest. I'll bet those seafaring men had a special place in their heart for Psalm 107, the one with a verse about guys just like them. I imagine they had sung it many times over the years while they hauled in their catch or mended their nets: Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters; they saw the deeds of the LORD, his wondrous works in the deep. For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their evil plight; they reeled and staggered like drunken men and were at their wits’ end. Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then t...

Today I revisited a book that changed my life a dozen years ago,  The Assurance of Our Salvation , by Martin Lloyd-Jones. Flipping through, I landed on this, all underlined and asterisked: “We are all too interested in our own moods and states and conditions; we are all too psychological and introspective, and too concerned, therefore, about the benefits that the Christian gospel and salvation have to give to us. And the result of this is that we we miss something of these great glories of the gospel as it is unfolded in the New Testament. This comes out very clearly if we listen to one another; have you not noticed how there is a tendency to be talking about ourselves? We are always telling people what has happened to us. 'Testimony' today generally means what we have experienced, or what has happened to us. How rarely do we speak about him! "...If you read the lives of the saints who have gone before us in this world, you will find that they spent most of their time ...