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Do not think me gentle -Wendell Berry
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
wow. just wow. and also, yes.
Thanks for sharing josh.
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not been in vain: David Platt's Ghost Stories or what to do about Christian Voyeurism. -
I have just started reading, ‘Radical Together,’ David Platt’s second eagerly read-only-to-be-completely-ignored book.
Picking out a few quotes from the first chapter, maybe you can see why.
The Gospel compels the church to go to God with everything we have and everything we do and then ask,…
Below is a beautiful and challenging prayer. Full surrender is so uncomfortable until your soul sees that He is the only trustworthy resting place and that hope in the world’s promises end in death; physical, emotional, spiritual, temporal, and eternal. He is teaching me to hope in deeper things.
I have recognized in myself, as of late, intentional daily acknowledgement of God’s holiness, glory, and grace, and yet felt only in isolated instances any true adoration or awe.
Worship runs deeper than conscious acknowledgement, it happens by the Spirit when I least expect it, and how sweet it is. I am learning. Lord, help me to see you, trust you, wait on you, love you, move past conscious acknowledgment and into free delight, that I might stand in awe and find the rest of worship today.
————————-
O God of the open ear,
Teach me to live by prayer as well as by providence,
for myself, soul, body, children, family, church.Give me a heart frameable to Your will,
so I might live in prayer,
and honor You,
being kept from evil, known and unknown.Help me to see the sin that accompanies all I do,
and the good I can distill from everything.
Help me not only to desire small things
but with holy boldness to desire great things
for Your people, for myself,
that they and I might live to show Your glory.———
Thanks Josh.
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This morning, I am moved by, and deeply thankful for what God has done in my life and in my family. Years ago, He revealed Himself to us and allowed us to experience and embrace His love.
Life without him is ultimately empty, my family has walked those paths. Life with Him has its highs and its lows, it’s still just life in a broken place, but in the end, it is filled with hope and joy and meaning that is ultimately inexpressible yet filled with glory. (1 peter 1:8)
Here’s to the God who entered the decay of our world with the grace and love to make ALL things new. He is true and GOOD.
Here’s to his relentless pursuit of my dad, a man who was a drug addicted, self-proclaimed atheist.
Here’s to His grace and power which effortlessly took my dad’s decades of running and doubt and rage and turned them into a magnifying glass for what grace can do in a life and a heart.
Here’s to how He transformed a broken life into a humble life of thanksgiving and faith that now ministers with deep empathy, humility, and love, to people who are walking the paths that now lay behind him.
Our God is good.
I love you dad.
Thank you Jesus.
“two things I ask of you, O Lord,
do not refuse me before I die:
Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
otherwise I may have too much and disown you
and say “who is the Lord?”
or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God”
—-
dang man. kinda rocked me. just think about it. heavy.
I spent the past week speaking at a camp in northern CA. As always, I was humbled and honored to be put in such a position.
At the end of the week, after all the events and lessons were done, the students and staff sat together around a fire and reflected on what the Lord had spoken into their hearts and lives throughout the week. I stood in the back tired, hungry, humbled, and thankful, as I soaked in all that the Lord had spoken into the students hearts over the week.
Towards the end of the meeting a senior girl stood up and began to share. What she said was simple, but struck me a deeply profound truth.
She spoke with anxious resolve:
“I have done the camp thing year after year. Every year I have gone home “on fire for God” telling him that it is all his, but time has proven that each year I have only been fooling myself. Every year there have been “but’s” and “if’s” attached to my trust and faith in Jesus. This year I have felt the direct call to give it all to Him. I mean ALL of it, my hopes, my dreams, my relationships, everything, and to be honest, I am really scared, because it feels like I just signed a blank contract with God.”
She said it quickly, I doubt anybody else thought twice about her words to be honest, but they fell heavy on my ears.
God has been speaking to me in similar ways lately.
Years into my journey with Him He is asking me, “will you sign the contract to follow afresh, though you stand more deeply aware of what it means to follow, and not knowing what is written above that dotted line, other than my good name? Do you REALLY trust me? Will you sign the contract, not because you have examined it and found it to be “safe”, but because you know I am its author, and I am above all things, good?
That young woman was on the right track I believe. We are all either in contract with this world, or in contract with God.
What if Jesus actually meant it when he said “the road is narrow and few find it” ?
What if the middle ground isn’t quite as broad as we think?
What if Jesus really meant it when He said “because you are lukewarm I will spit you out”
What if we never really signed God’s contract?
The contract this world sets before us is simple, written in bullet points and plain english.
You know what you are getting yourself into when you sign it. Money, comfort, sex, pleasure. Tough truth: These things are God’s deffinition of “vanity” and “vapor” apart from the infiltration of the life of Jesus Christ, and once His life has filled them, they become about His kingdom. Means and gifts, not ends in and of themselves.
God just cuts to the chase and says, “whoever seeks to safe his life will lose it, but whoever will lose his life for my sake will find it.”
What if it really is impossible to worship God and the things of this world (even the good things) simultaneously?
What if the church at large has been blinded to the fact that many “followers” are trying to adhere to both contracts at once and in doing so, rendering God’s contract null and void because in their very nature the contracts are mutually exclusive.
The “contract” metaphor only extends so far, but the question remains: do we trust Him? And it is a sobering realization when we find out our words alone have little bearing in proving the answer to this weighty question a “yes”.
Need rest in the midst of these high and difficult stakes? It is found in one thing: the strong, and unchanging finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. He paid for my right to sign the contract with His infinitely valuable blood.
Perhaps the most soul calming truth I have heard in months, maybe years, was in a sermon by Tim Keller I recently listened to:
“It is not the quality of your faith that saves you, but its object”
This is calming because I have found my faith weak, and I wrestle with signing the blank contract so often.
Lord, give me the faith to sign the dotted line with nothing but Your Name above it, because you are good. Thanks for the words you gave that young woman this week.
You are good, above all things.
——
“Ooh!” said Susan,”I’d thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
Chapter 8,
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
The Chronicles of Narnia
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“It has become conventional to think as if we are all going to live in this world forever and to view every bereavement as a reason for doubting the goodness of God. We must all deep down know that this is ridiculous, but we do it all the same. And in doing it we part company with the Bible, with historic Christianity, and with a basic principle of right living, namely that only when you know how to die can you know how to live.”
- JI Packer
“If you want to be happy do not pray for discernment.”
— A.W. Tozer. 
(via claridon)
(via claridon-deactivated20110609)
The following is an excerpt from “The Mortification of Sin” by the puritan author John Owen. I have been slowly reading through it for months now. It is incredibly meaty.
It encouraged me and convicted me recently and I thought I would share a portion of it here with any willing to read.
It is a very intense book to be sure. But it seems wise to me, if the wages of sin are truly death, (and they are Rom 6:23) to strive towards holiness with all our hearts, and to likewise be “intense” in our striving against sin. As Paul says in Ephesians 6, we all struggle against the powers of this dark word and against the spiritual forces of evil. And the writer of Hebrews gives us a sobering reminder in Hebrews 10:26 that “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left”. (read whole chapter for context here)
“Let’s not get carried away. We all stumble in many ways.( James 3:2)”, you might say.
Yes, we all stumble in many ways. The goal is not perfection, that is an impossible pursuit that only leads in guilt, exhaustion, and shame. Its called religion. I have fought and continue to fight this battle with my sense of the need to make some sacrifice for my sin. Yet, Hebrews 10:18 tells us that “where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin.”
The gift of God really is eternal life in Christ Jesus, and this truth, when truly considered and consumed, propels a heart towards grace and holiness, and away from sin and death.
The healthy goal in seeking holiness is to obtain a heart that loves and treasures God and the things of God exceedingly, and hates sin and the “desires of this world” increasingly. Only a right heart can produce right living.
The Christian life is the process of God radically realigning a sinful heart’s values and treasures towards himself.
Sin in any capacity has a quick numbing effect. It keeps the heart from the Spirit induced fuel of holiness: heart felt affection for God and the things of God.
—
In my own life, through seasons of intentional indwelling sin or mindless disobedience, I have found myself quickly stumbling into a sort of “spiritual sleepwalking”.
In these seasons, though I may be practicing many of the same “spiritual” acts and maintaining many of my religious habits, I find myself without any true heart for God, and taking little or no pleasure in Him or the pursuit of HIm. What was once my delight becomes duty once again. The things of God become dim and the things of the word begin to develop a sharp glaze of attraction.
Sometimes we need to be shaken with the truth of what is at stake in our seemingly menial sins.
Sometimes, we need to be gently reminded of the unfailing love of God presented in the Scriptures.
Right remembering produces right rejoicing. That is what Owen is saying here.
Remember the small fraction your human mind can comprehend of what God has done for you in His death and resurrection, and you will be compelled, as Paul was in 2 Cor 5:14 to live, die, and act for nothing less than the holiness of a reigning ruling God.
And when you are living like that, on mission, you will hate sin, and you will long to never go numb again.
Lord, give us grace. Give us your Spirit. Give us your Word.
—
“Bring your lust to the gospel, not for relief, but for further conviction of its guilt. Look on him who you have pierced, and be in bitterness. Say to your soul, “What have I done? What love, what mercy, what blood, what grace have I despised and trampled on!
Is this the return I make to the Father for his love, to the Son for his blood, to the Holy Ghost for His grace? Is this how I thank the Lord?
Have I defiled the heart that Christ died to wash, that the blessed Spirit has chosen to dwell in?…
Do I account communion with him of so little value that for this vile lust’s sake I have left little room in my heart? How shall I escape if I neglect so great a salvation?
In the meantime what shall I say to the Lord? Love, mercy, peace, grace, goodness, joy, consolation, I have despised them all, and esteemed them as nothing, that I might harbor a lust in my heart.
Have I obtained a view of God’s fatherly countenance, that I might behold his face and provoke him to his face?
Was my soul washed that I might make room for new defilements?…
Shall I daily grieve the Sprit through whom I am sealed until the day of redemption?
Entertain your conscience daily with these questions. See if it can stand before this aggravation of its guilt. If this does not make it sink or melt in some measure, I fear your case is dangerous.”
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