May it live with the reality of our dependence upon Christ our great Physician…and seek to know Him, drawing close to Him, The Word, through His Word!

J.C. Ryle writes – “Now the Gospels were written to make us acquainted with Christ. The Holy Ghost has told us the story of His life and death, His sayings and His doings, four times over. Four different inspired hands have drawn the picture of the Saviour. His ways, His manners, His feelings, His wisdom, His grace, His patience, His love, His power are graciously unfolded to us by four different witnesses. Ought not the patient to be familiar with the Physician? Ought not the bride to be familiar with the Bridegroom? Ought not the sinner to be familiar with Saviour? Beyond doubt it ought to be so. The Gospels were written to make men familiar with Christ, and therefore I wish men to study the Gospels……Surely we cannot know this Christ too well! Surely there is not a word, nor a deed, nor a day, nor a step, nor a thought in the record of His life, which ought not to be precious to us. We should labour to be familiar with every line that is written about Jesus.”

I preached this week from James 2:14-26 about the necessity of our obedience to God which evidences the reality of our true faith.  Brian Wells mentioned this brief article from World Magazine which encourages us along similar lines…thanks Brian!

Søren Kierkegaard wrote:

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer then offered:

“Doubt and reflection take the place of spontaneous obedience. … It is a retreat from the reality of God to the speculations of men, from faith to doubt. [The rich young man of Matthew 19] had hoped to avoid committing himself to any definite moral obligations by forcing Jesus to discuss his spiritual problems. … Keep on posing problems, and you will escape the necessity of obedience.”

With more like 70 percent certainty than 100 percent, recently I forged ahead and took action in a matter I thought God was leading me to. This was after weeks of reflecting and dithering. Up until the very minute I committed the act I was not sure, but it seemed to be what the Bible commanded. It was only after the deed was done that I received both inner and outer confirmation of its rightness—and a mysterious strengthening of faith.

We like to think that only he who believes can obey. But I believe Bonhoeffer was profoundly right: “Only he who is obedient can believe.”

I didn’t realize until after I watched this video, that today marks 5 years since Johnny Cash died.  David Young mentioned this video of Johnny Cash’s song Hurt to me a few days ago…a song where Johnny Cash sings about the futility of earthly fame and worldly success, and how as an old man he considers it nothing more than an “empire of of dirt”…bringing nothing but hurt and pain.  I hear Ecclesiastes all through the song.  Powerful!

It is wise for us to learn from the older men and women and their reflections on their lives.  As younger people we can deceive ourselves by saying that somehow it will be different for us.  But the only way this is truly possible, to live a life not wasted, is to live for that which is eternal.  Only the life lived for the glory and renown for Jesus Christ and His mission will be a life not wasted.

Make sure you watch the whole video, and the second time is better than the first. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go (embedding this video was blocked).

I was just copied on this very provoking email (with link) by a Grace Church member, Liz Oleck, on the necessity of compassion being a driving force for why we would ever talk to them about the gospel.  I hope it provokes you as it has me.  Thanks Liz!

I just posted this article on the Campus Crusade website yesterday and I wanted to share it with you.  I think it’s super impacting when it comes to developing a heart for the lost. We need to change before we can be used by God to help other people change. I think this is a heart we need to develop more as a church, as singles and to encourage the youth in as well. Let’s get out of our Christian bubbles! Let’s do what David said on Sunday, let’s start reaching out and talking to people who are not like us at all and ask God how we can love and serve them.

Liz

I came across this video clip yesterday from the TV show ER (I am not endorsing this whole show as a source of truth, but this one clip was particularly honest).  It is a strong picture of the reality of what people are truly left with after being given a post-modern gospel…nothing.  In the clip, there is a man who is truly wrestling with guilt over sins in his life and facing the reality of what he will face after his death.  The hospital chaplain gives him only hope-to-make-you-feel better answers (questions) with the assumption that truth can be found within us…or at least help us think whatever we want to think until it is too late.  His conscience testifies that this is foolishness…and screams to hear reality!

The question for us is: what do we give people?  Are we bold to speak the truth about sin, wrath, and true atonement?  Will people have to ask us again for the real hope after we give a first “weak” answer like this hospital chaplain gave?  Let it be that we always speak the true gospel, realizing that most times people won’t be searching for answers like this man but need to hear the truth none the less…speak with faith that God can awaken truth in their hearts.

I just came across this from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on meekness, from a sermon covering Matthew 5:5.  May God grant to me, and each of us, a greater measure of Christ’s meek humility!

The meek man is not proud of himself, he does not in any sense glory in himself. He feels that there is nothing in himself of which he can boast. It also means that he does not assert himself…He does not make demands for his position, his privileges, his possessions, his status in life (see esp. Phil 2:5)…the man who is meek is not even sensitive about himself. He is not always watching himself and his own interests.  He is not al­ways on the defensive…We spend the whole of our lives watching ourselves. But when a man becomes meek he has finished with all that; he no longer worries about himself and what other people say. To be truly meek means we no longer protect ourselves, be­cause we see there is nothing worth defending. So we are not on the defensive; all that is gone. The man who is truly meek never pities himself, he is never sorry for himself. He never talks to himself and says, ‘You are having a hard time, how unkind these people are not to understand you: He never thinks: `How wonderful I really am, if only other people gave me a chance.’ Self-pity! What hours and years we waste in this! But the man who has become meek has finished with all that. To be meek, in other words, means that you have finished with yourself altogether, and you come to see you have no rights or deserts at all. You come to realize that nobody can harm you. John Bunyan puts it per­fectly. ‘He that is down need fear no fall.’ When a man truly sees himself, he knows nobody can say anything about him that is too bad. You need not worry about what men may say or do; you know you deserve it all and more.  Once again, therefore, I would define meekness like this.  The man who is truly meek is the one who is amazed that God and man can think of him as well as they do and treat him as well as they do.  That, it seems to me, is its essential quality.  (Lloyd-Jones, D. M. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount)

For more reading in this similar vein, let me encourage you to read Humility by Andrew Murray (I just read it again a few weeks ago for the ??th time – pure spiritual gold!).

What if the hour of the trumpet was now, and we would be departing from this earth as we know it?  What if the Bridegroom was now at hand to beckon us to come to Him and abandon all else?  What are the thoughts that go through our minds at the thought of this life being over?  Are there pursuits, pleasures or people which you would longingly look back to…reluctant and saddened to leave?  Would there be things yet undone (relationships, marriage, kids, vacations, accomplishments…life) which we would be saddened for not having done them.  Is the thought of departing to be with Christ eclipsed by what would no longer be with you or yours to enjoy anymore here on this earth? 

Where our minds go to things in this life, we are living like Lot’s wife (Genesis 19) where she revealed what she loved most as she looked back to Sodom and Gomorrah as God destroyed them…and was turned to a pillar of salt  She revealed there were things she loved more than God.  God commands, “Have no gods before me,” but we can do by loving other things when contemplating departing from all and having Him only.  “Do not love the world or the things of the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in Him.” 

For most of us, our hearts are mixed.  We must repent where we have loved this world (even if they are blessings) more than Christ.  We must cast down the idols in our hearts.  Be vigilant and radical…our souls are at stake.  Let us fight in prayer for Christ to truly be everything to us.  Let us pray, that we would with Paul, count everything as worthless compared to knowing Him.  God will give grace to the humble!

Over the past couple weeks here at Grace, God has been laying upon our hearts, as a church, to give ourselves to prayer and fasting.  Two weeks ago, Wayne shared on Sunday a sense of spiritual attack in so many areas of our lives, and the concern that we focus so heavily upon the enemy of sin in our lives that we can functionally forget that we also have an enemy who has schemes and endeavours to exploit our inclinations to sin.  So, as a church, we have been giving ourselves to prayer and fasting to seek God’s assistance in the fight, that he would help us see the reality of the battle we are in and powerful sufficiency of the weapons he has given us for the battle (Ephesians 6, etc.), so that we will depend upon Him and His grace and fight with all the strength that He provides.

But for me, no matter what need and prayer leads me to begin fasting, the question always comes up of how desperate for and dependant upon God I truly am.  God is always faithful to reveal areas of passivity and complacentcy in my love and devotion to Him.  He is always faithful to bring me back to feasting upon him…with each hunger pain I am reminded that I have a choice of who/what I will be satisfied with.  Freshly experiencing the gift of fasting, I am freshly reminded with the dulling progression which naturally happens in my soul if I am not vigilant.  My soul tends to be consumed with good things if I do not radically pursue the Greatest.  Most often, it is satisfaction and enjoyment of “good life”, which is almost entirely comprised of the blessings of God, which tend to lead to my passion for God staying at the level of a tealight candle rather than a zealously raging fire.  God uses fasting to purge my soul becuase it brings front and center the issue of whether I am going to deny myself for the sake of Christ, or whether I am going to be corraled by staying close to comfort.  Sure, fasting doesn’t ensure that I, or any of us, will take up our cross, but it helps me train.  Without use, muscles experience atrophy.  Without strenuous training, my soul struggles to respond with strength and faith in the many testings I experience daily.  But thanks be to God, that through fasting my faith is built as I moment by moment train in saying “no” to myself and “I hunger for you…you are the chief desire of my heart” to God.

I thank God that he has made me dependant upon food so that I can know what it means for him to be the bread of life.  I thank God that he has given me hunger, so that I can know better what hunger and desperation for Him should look like.  I thank God for fasting and how He so faithfully has blessed my soul through it. 

How has God used fasting to strengthen you love for him and faith to sustain you?

There are several of us here at Grace (Church) who will from time to time have little email “flare ups” where we go back and forth with discussions of the Christian life…theology, doctrine, practical issues, humor, etc..  This blog is an encouragement to letting those conversations continue, as well as making them accessable to whoever would like to join in. 

Hebrews 10:24, which is this blog’s theme verse, says Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works…  The goal of this blog is to encourage and spur one another on in the faith through Scripture, meditations, provocations, thoughts, questions, ideas, etc.

In addition to me, (David) there will also be others from here at Grace putting up posts on this blog…and not everything posted is necessarily the same viewpoint of the rest…which means the comments and following dialogue are going to be important.    All posts and comments are open to responses…dialogue is the whole point.  Love and humility must be the attitude, but truth will matter here…to use the phrase, “humble orthodoxy” should be the atmosphere.