Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:
First, some posts about the gospel. Tullian Tchividjian talks about the important connection between the gospel and our Christian growth in two posts here and here. Meanwhile, Trevin Wax suggests that worry comes from a failure to grasp the gospel.
Second, another post on idolatry. Thabiti Anyabwile gives us a quote from Paul David Tripp that ties our desires, idolatry, and spiritual adultery together.
I am teaching a class on the Great Awakening. Today we are looking at Jonathan Edwards. As part of the class we are going to look at his Resolutions, or at least the first 10 of his 70 (time constraints!). They are well worth reading. I have included the first 10 to challenge us with a few observations following:
Excerpt from Jonathan Edward’s Resolutions
Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do humbly entreat him by his grace to enable me to keep these Resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to his will, for Christ’s sake.
Remember to read over these Resolutions once a week.
1. Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God’s glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriads of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty, and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many and how great so ever.
2. Resolved, to be continually endeavoring to find out some new invention and contrivance to promote the fore-mentioned things.
3. Resolved, if ever I shall fall and grow dull, so as to neglect to keep any part of these Resolutions, to repent of all I can remember, when I come to myself again.
4. Resolved, never to do any manner of thing, whether in soul or body, less or more, but what tends to the glory of God; nor be, nor suffer it, if I can avoid it.
5. Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.
6. Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.
7. Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.
8. Resolved, to act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings as others; and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God.
9. Resolved, to think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.
10. Resolved, when I feel pain, to think of the pains of martyrdom, and of hell.
Three Observations
First, his focus. He has a clear focus, a purpose in life. He isn’t just coasting along. And his focus is summed up in his first resolution: to live for God’s glory, his own profit and pleasure, and the good of mankind. One may wonder how the middle one relates to the others, but in Edward’s mind his profit and pleasure were found in God. So living for God and his own pleasure were the same thing. And of course, living for the good of others is part of living for God. The question for us then is: Are we living focussed lives, and if so, what is our focus?
Second, his sense of time. He wants to remember that this life is brief. Death is certain (#9), and so he wants to live each moment as if it were his last (#7). He wants to live with all of his might (#6), not wasting a single hour (#5). His desired intensity is incredible. Meanwhile we talk about wasting time here and killing time there. Life is short – are we living it well?
Third, his humility. He recognizes how feeble he is. In his introduction, he recognizes his need of God’s help and grace to keep these resolutions – he can’t do them in his own power. He further sees the possibility of failure, and recognizes the need to repent and start again (#3). Finally, rather than condemning the failures of others, he wants the failures of others to remind him of his own failings (#8). Essentially he wants to remember that he is a sinner saved by grace. What about us? Do we recognize our own sins and see our daily need for grace?
Maybe with God’s help we need to make some of our own resolutions for life….
Here are some good posts for the weekend to challenge you to grow in your walk with the Lord:
First, Ray Ortland quotes Simone Weil with the reminder that worship is inevitable – the only question is whether we will worship God or an idol. If we want to worship God, Kevin DeYoung provides us with 20 Biblical ways to glorify God.
Second, Stephen Altrogge reminds us that we should seek to live in such a way that others can imitate us, and that we should seek others that we can imitate. While we follow Christ, it is helpful for us to see what that means fleshed out in one another.
Third, there are a number of posts related to spiritual disciplines worth looking at. Chris Brauns invites us to the habit of true confession to one another toward the end of reconciliation (the comic alone is worth looking at). Then Stephen Altrogge asks four people about godly habits they have cultivated. There are some interesting ones to consider. Here are the links to this four part series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. What is a godly habit that has helped form you that you might share with us? Comments are open.
Idolatry, ancient and modern alike, consists in trusting some substitute for God to serve some uniquely divine function…. Why do people choose the substitute over God himself? Probably the most important reason is that it obviates accountability to God. We can meet idols on our own terms because they are our own creations. They are safe, predictable, and controllable; they are, in Jeremiah’s colorful language, the “scarecrows in a cucumber field” (10:5). They are portable and completely under the user’s control. They offer nothing like the threat of a God who thunders from Sinai and whose providence in this world so often appears to us to be incomprehensible and dangerous. People who “remain in the center of their lives and loyalties, autonomous architects of their own futures,” Keyes argues, thereby avoid coming face to face with God and his truth. They need face only themselves. That is the appeal of idolatry.
– David Wells in God in the Wasteland (Eerdmans 1994)
Keyes quote from Keyes, “The Idol Factory” in No God But God
edited by Os Guinness and John Seel (Moody Press 1993)
In the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6, Jesus gives us two ways to live.
One way is to live for self. We can chase after riches, fullness, laughter, and popularity. We can live to gain for ourselves, as though the world revolved around self. This is our tendency even from our youngest years – consider the toddler throwing a tantrum because he doesn’t get what he wants. To those who live this way, Jesus says: “Woe to you.”
But Jesus calls us to another way of life. He calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him. Instead of living for self, we should live for Christ. We should be willing to give up all the world chases after and become poor, hungry, weeping, hated, rejected, and ridiculed for the sake of Christ. When we live for Christ instead of ourselves, Jesus says: “Blessed are you.” But that is not all. Jesus then goes on to tell us to live for others – even those who hate us, ridicule us, and reject us. He tells us to love our enemies. We are to do good, bless, pray for, and be merciful to others. Rather than judge and condemn others, we should forgive and give generously. Live for Christ and others. Love God and people. Live with a passion for God and compassion for people.
Two ways to live. We can live for self or we can live for Christ and others. Jesus closes his sermon with four applications:
First, choose your teachers carefully. Those blind to the truth follow those blind to the truth, and they both fall into a pit. But if you are in Christ, you are no longer blind, so don’t follow those who are. When we are fully trained we will be like our teacher. If we make the lies of our culture our teacher, we will be like our culture – we will live for self. If we make Christ our teacher, we will be like Christ, willing to give of ourselves for others. So who are we listening to? What does our favorite music, movies, books, magazines, and websites teach us? What do our closest friends teach us? To live for self or for Christ? Have we chosen our teachers carefully? Do we need to make some changes?
Of course, our culture is everywhere, and we cannot help but hear the lies, but we can minimize our exposure. And when we do hear the lies, we can reject them rather than let them shape us. We must continually ask ourselves the question as we traverse this world: “Is this true?” And we must saturate ourselves with the truth of God’s Word so we can know the truth and see the lies.
Second, Jesus calls us to apply the truth to ourselves first. We may agree with Jesus that we should live for him instead of ourselves, but we have this tendency too often to apply the truth to someone else. We think: “He really needs to hear this message. I hope so-and-so is listening. I should send this post to her….” Though we may have a plank in our own eyes, we want to take the speck out of another’s eyes. Jesus calls us to look to ourselves first, to apply the message to our own lives.
Third, we need to focus on the heart. The tree determines the fruit. Our heart determines our words and actions. It would be easy to hear Jesus’ message to love others, and attempt to tinker with our words and actions. But Jesus says we need to go deeper, we need to address our hearts.
We are all born with hearts bent toward sin, bent toward self. So our first need is to get a new heart bent toward God. We need to be born again. We need Christ to come into our lives and change us if we have any hope of living for Christ and others.
Assuming we have received Jesus as our Savior and have received a new heart, we must guard our hearts. Our new heart believes the best thing is to live for Jesus. It desires to live for Jesus. With that believe and desire, we will live for Jesus. But we have been living for self for a long time. And our culture calls us constantly to live for ourselves. And so we must guard our hearts from the lies of the culture we once believed. We must guard our hearts from the sinful desires of our culture we once desired. When we don’t, lies mix with truth, sinful desires mix with desires for Christ, and we sin. That is why we still sin. Sometimes we believe the lies, desire what the lies promise, and live out the lie. What we believe is what we will desire, and what we desire is what we will do. Our heart leads to our words and actions.
And so we must also examine our hearts. We need God’s Word to discern the thoughts and intents of our hearts (Hebrews 4:12) to reveal the lies and sinful desires. We need to pray with the Psalmist: “Search me, O God, and know my heart (Psalm 139). We can’t just tinker with our words and actions. We must examine our hearts.
Finally, we must live the truth. We shouldn’t claim Jesus is our Lord if we don’t obey him. We can’t simply listen to the truth, we must live it out. If we do, we are like the man who builds on a firm foundation, whose house stands. If we don’t, we are like a man who builds without a foundation, and great is the ruin.
Jesus calls us to stop living for ourselves, and to start living for Christ and others. If we are to do that, we must choose our teachers carefully. We must apply this truth to ourselves first. We must focus on the heart – we need a new heart, we must guard our heart, and we must examine our heart. We must live out the truth.
So how do you need to respond to Jesus’ message? As you respond and live for Christ and others, you will hear our Lord say to you: “Blessed are you!”
I’ve been busy getting ready for winter which could be here any day where I live, and so blogging has had to move to the back burner for a bit. But hopefully I’ll be blogging again this week. To kick-off, here a few posts of interest to check out:
First, Crossway gives us an excerpt of Darrin Patrick’s new book Church Planter, which among other things addresses different types of idolatry.
Stephen Altrogge addresses the issue of being too busy to delight in Jesus. And Mike Wittmer calls us to slow down to notice the love of God in our daily lives.
Finally, Mike Wiitmer calls us to stop living like atheists, and run to God in prayer.
Happy reading!
A few weeks ago I finished Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield. It offers an interesting look at true love vs selfishness. (Friendly warning: this post includes numerous spoilers….)
Let’s start with selfishness. Mr. Murdstone claims to love people, but he only wants to control them and make them like himself. Steerforth claims to love people but only to get what he wants. Uriah Heep claims to be humble, but only as a disguise for his selfish grasping plans. All three make great claims, but obsessed with themselves they leave a trail of human wreckage.
How different is real love. Mr. Peggotty gives up everything to travel all over Europe in search of his adopted daughter whom Steerforth has lured away. Like Jesus, he goes to great lengths to seek and save one who is lost. And then there is Agnes who loves Copperfield, and stands by him through thick and thin even when he marries another. Neither Agnes nor Mr. Peggotty have any promise of return, but both give of themselves for those they love.
Dicken’s characters have real life counterparts. In the “novel” of life, we undoubtedly know both types of people to various degrees. But the real question is: what kind of character are we? The character who talks a good talk but is obsessed with self no matter who is hurt? Or the character who speaks with self-giving actions even to his own hurt?
“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”
– I John 3:16-18
Highlights from around the web:
Give yourself a spiritual check-up. Don’t like the results? C.J. Mahaney gives some Biblical help for your spiritual dehyrdration.
Another test – how do you know when you really understand the gospel?
And then back to our old problem of idolatry. Here are some helpful questions to help you identify your functional saviors. And have you ever considered that your idols are like a pacifier?
Finally, remember to pray for God to powerfully work in your pastor’s preaching of the Word for the building up of Christ’s church and the glory of God.
In Luke 10:38-42, we have seen the danger of being distracted like Martha, and the priority of listening like Mary. But how can we apply this to our lives today? We must make space for God. We must make time to sit and listen to Jesus. We need to make space each day to spend time with God. We need to make space each week to gather with God’s people to spend time together with God. Let me share three pointers that I am learning when it comes to making space for God:
First, we have to address our busyness, our distractions. Some things may need to go in order to make space for God each day, and each week. Each of us needs to evaluate our lives from time to time to see if we have become too busy, to consider ways to simplify, to make sure we are making space for God.
Second, we need to make enough space for God. Hurry kills relationship; it kills listening. If you spend five minutes racing through a passage of Scripture and throwing up a quick prayer and wonder why you have a distant relationship with God and get little out of your time with God, then the answer is found one word: hurry. Let me say it again: hurry kills relationship; it kills listening. We need to make enough space to spend time to listen to God by meditating on his Word. To meditate is to ponder, consider, think about. It means reading and thinking until you get a good idea of what God is saying, and how it relates to you, and how you need to respond. We need to make enough space to meditate and respond in prayer without constantly checking the clock, without rushing, without hurry. And we need to make enough space on Sundays that we can meditate along with the pastor during the sermon without constantly checking our watches hoping the pastor will hurry.
Third, we need to protect our space with God. In our daily time with God, we must not allow intrusions or distractions. Pick a good time. Find a quiet place. Ignore the phone (is the person calling more important than the one you are already talking with?). Don’t schedule other things during that time. Yes, I know we must at times, and emergencies do come up, but these should be exceptions rather than the rule. On Sundays too we need to protect our space with God. Family and friends get-togethers really can wait until after church (and far enough after that you aren’t rushing – see point 2 above). Do your best not to have to work. Don’t allow others things to take priority. Remember, our first priority is listening to Jesus. Protect your space.
If we are going to listen to Jesus and not live distracted lives, we must make space for God. That includes addressing our busyness, making enough space to meditate on God’s Word, and protecting our space. How foolish for us to let other things take priority over God. He is the priority. Father, help us to make space for you….
In Luke 1o:38-42, while Martha is distracted, Jesus says there is only one thing or few things necessary. Mary has chosen it. She is sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to him. That is the one thing. Sit and listen. Stop all of the busyness and listen. Be still and know that he is God. Listen to him. Hear him. Enjoy time with God. That is the one thing. That is the priority.
Part of me rebels. Sit and listen? I don’t have time. I have too much to do. I can’t just sit and not accomplish anything. I am so addicted to doing and accomplishing that I am tempted to think sitting and listening is a waste of time. I need to be doing something!
Another part of me tries to turn this listening into accomplishing. I have to read so many verses. I have to accomplish my devotional plan. My focus moves from God to another accomplishment. There is nothing wrong with a plan unless it takes over the focus.
Yet another part of me cries out to sit at his feet and listen like Mary did. I want to know God like the Psalmist. I want to thirst for God and find my satisfaction in him (Psalm 63). I just want to sit and listen.
Jesus says Mary has chosen the good portion. That word – portion – brings us back to Israel entering the Promised Land. Each tribe was given a portion of the land as an inheritance. Each tribe, except Levi. God was Levi’s portion. The Psalmists take off on this idea, seeking God as their portion. The Lord is my chosen portion (Psalm 16:5). God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever (Psalm 73:26). The Lord is my portion (Psalm 119:57). You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living (Psalm 142:5). I want Jesus to be my portion. I want to sit and listen.
Does this mean that we check out of daily life and just sit and listen. Emphatically no. It means that listening to Jesus is our first priority. Why? Because listening is foundational to the rest of our lives.
Jesus gives us the perfect pattern. He often went away to spend time with his Father. Then he would come back to serve. Listen, then serve. Spend time with God to gain wisdom and strength for the day, and then go forth into the day. Listening is a priority because it helps us live life well for the Lord.
And yet, listening is a priority not just because it helps me live my day better. Listening is a priority simply because of who I am listening to. I need to listen to God simply because he is God. He deserves my attention. Listening to Jesus is the one thing necessary, the priority, simply because God is the priority.
Father, help us to listen….
