A help to make your Sunday (or anyday) a gospel celebration

I found this quote to be awe inspiring as I consider the love of God for His people:

“If you need proof that God is for you, look no further than the Cross. I cannot imagine what pain the Father must have experienced when he heard Jesus cry out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ He forsook his own Son so that we might know him as Father and never be forsaken ourselves. What further demonstration do we need? That bloody form hung there on the Cross to make this eternal proclamation: ‘I AM FOR YOU!’”

- C.J. Mahaney, “This Great Salvation” in This Great Salvation (Gaithersburg, Md.: Sovereign Grace Ministries, 1992), 7-8.

May your Sunday, and everyday, be a day of celebrating, proclaiming, and living out the gospel!

HT: Of First Importance

The Legend of Moses

I found the following quite helpful in reminding me that I don’t have the vantage point or wisdom of God when considering life and its circumstances.  Therefore, I must joyfully trust in Him as He works all things according to the counsel of His will.

 A legend says that Moses once sat near a well in meditation.  A wayfarer stopped to drink from the well and when he did so, his purse fell from his girdle into the sand.  The man departed. 

 Shortly afterwards another man passed near the well, saw the purse and picked it up. 

 Later a third man stopped to assuage his thirst and went to sleep in the shadow of the well. 

 Meanwhile, the first man had discovered that his purse was missing and assuming that he must have lost it at the well, returned, awoke the sleeper (who, of course, knew nothing) and demanded his money back.  An argument followed and irate, the first man slew the latter. 

 Whereupon, Moses said to God, “You see, therefore men do not believe you.  There is too much evil and injustice in the world.  Why should the first man have lost his purse and then become a murderer?  Why should the second have gotten a purse full of gold without having worked for it?  The third was completely innocent.  Why was he slain?”

 God answered, “For once and only once, I will give you and explanation.  I cannot do it at every step.  The first man was a thief’s son.  The purse contained money stolen by his father from the father of the second man, who finding the purse only found what was due him.  The third was a murderer whose crime had never been revealed and who received from the first the punishment he deserved.  In the future, believe that there is sense and righteousness in what transpires even when you do not understand.”

 Piper, John.  Future Grace (Multnomah Books, 1995).

 [NOTE: This was quoted in something put out by Ken Sande’s Peacemaker ministries – www.HisPeace.org – I don’t recall reading it in Future Grace]

Knowing God

I don’t know when I was saved. I do believe that conversion happens instantly, that there is a “moment in time” when I was justified/forgiven/saved, but I don’t know when that happened in my life. I know in whom I have believed and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me (2 Timothy 1:12). For that, I am eternally grateful to God for His sovereign grace!

I do have evidences of God’s grace stamped in my life that bring me greater assurances of my salvation than having a date written in my Bible. One of the glorious fruits of conversion in my life, where God in His grace implanted His goodness deep into my heart is the great desire I have to know God. I have, for years, echoed the cry of Paul the Apostle, “the I may know Him” (Philippians 3:10), because I am convinced of the “surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8).

That desire has purified my devotional life – for when I pick up God’s Word to read, I know I am fellowshipping with the King of the Ages and have been granted access into the heart and mind of God. I am not just reading to check off my three chapters a day (though it is easy for me to slip into that mindset….). That is also why I love books like, A.W. Tozer’s, The Pursuit of God and The Knowledge of the Holy and J.I. Packer’s Knowing God.

I’m reading through Knowing God right now, and my heart was blessed and enlarged by the opening paragraphs of chapter three, “Knowing and being known” (which is an excellent chapter!).

What were we made for? To know God.

What aim should we set ourselves in live? To know God.

What is the “eternal life” that Jesus gives? Knowledge of God. “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3).

What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight and contentment than anything else? Knowledge of God. “This is what the Lord says: ‘Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me’” (Jer 9:23-24)

What, of all the states God ever sees man in, gives God most pleasure? Knowledge of himself. “I desired… the knowledge of him God more than burnt offerings,” says God (Hos. 6:6 KJV).

[J.I. Packer, Knowing God, p. 33]

What a glorious pursuit! What a rewarding investment of my time and life! Packer says:

“…knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a person’s heart.”

May this warm your heart and motivate you, as it did me, to pursue God and experience this great and lasting and ever-increasing thrill.

Guard my precious ones!

God has blessed me with five children, and ooooooh how precious they are to me! They are not perfect, but at ages 9, 7, 5, 2, and 8 months, the heartaches of parenting have only been tasted in very small dosages.

Yet, I am fully aware of the potentialities - their flesh is weak, their minds easily deceived, their desires could develop taste buds that find evil to be delicious. I must fight for their souls! I must do all I can and am responsible to do as their father. I must earnestly pray for them, pour the scriptures into their minds, model godliness, show them their faults, give them hope in Jesus.

I fall short here. It's easy to reside in a place of ease when my kids are delightfully innocent and joyfully tender.

The following testimony, from one of my modern day heroes, caused me to feel that urgency again. He tells of the agony of having a wayward son, and what he did to fight for his son and to battle his own sinful inclinations during that time.
And, by the grace of God, his prodigal son did return home.

“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!” (Psalm 126:5, ESV). My main memory of Abraham’s prodigal years is tears. As I knelt in prayer, I would remember the 9-year-old Abraham walking with me to 6:30 a.m. winter prayer meetings—willingly. I would take hold of Jesus’ cloak and cry:

“O Jesus, please, don’t let go of him.”

He was never more than a breath away. One moment I would be rejoicing over some simple blessing, and then suddenly he was there, a heaviness, an ache. I would wonder what he was doing. And I would pour another prayer into the great censer before the throne.

Then there was fear. Will he destroy himself? Will he ruin a girl’s life? Will he get a disease? Will he turn out to be an Esau? To survive I had to make the daily transfer: “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you” (Psalm 55:22). Every day the sorrow was new. Every day sustaining mercies were new (Lamentations 3:23).

All the while God was making me a broken-hearted pastor. God loves His people through the pain of His shepherds. None of our sufferings is wasted. We do not graduate from the seminary of sorrows in this life. But oh, how glad I am that this class is over, and Abraham is home. Thank You, Jesus, for not letting go.

You can read Abraham's short testimony of His conversion and some excellent insights in how parents of wayward children can reach out to them (wise advice from a former "wayward" child) here.

HT: Justin Childers

I could wish that I myself were accursed…. revisted

Charles Spurgeon stands as a man whose zeal for the lost stands alongside of Paul's in Romans 9. Listen to his ache for the lost:

If I never won souls, I would sigh till I did. I would break my heart over them if I could not break their hearts. Though I can understand the possibility of an earnest sower never reaping, I cannot understand the possibility of an earnest sower being content not to reap. I cannot comprehend any one of you Christian people trying to win souls and not having results, and being satisfied without results.

Charles Spurgeon, quoted in Don Whitney's Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (p113)

HT: Reformissionary