All Over the Blogosphere: Death is not Dying

Since everyone else is posting this to their blogs, I decided to post it to mine as well. It is a video of Rachel Barkey giving her testimony. She has terminal cancer and, barring a miracle, will not live to see her 38th birthday. She is married and has two young children.

I watched the video on Saturday. Her testimony is incredibly powerful. You can watch the video here and listen to the audio here.

John Owen: Part Two

So, all two of the people that read my blog will be glad to know that Steven Altrogge has posted part two of his 'interview' with John Owen. (You can read part one here).

I liked this part. So true!

SA: What’s the second reason I should fight my sin?

JO: So you can be happy! Your spiritual happiness is directly related to your holiness. You want spiritual strength, comfort, power, and peace, right?

SA: That would be a “yes”.

JO: Sin and Satan are in the business of stealing these things from you. Sin will entangle your affections and cloud your communion with God. It will drive out your love for God and suck the life out of your spirit. If you want to be happy you need to be holy.

Read the whole post here.

Perfection (Maturity): A Joyful, Hopeful Pursuit

For many years, I never realized that becoming more like Christ could be a joyful pursuit. I guess I never understood biblical sanctification, but over the past year or so, I have come to a greater understanding of freedom in Christ. Not the freedom to do what I want, but rather the freedom to obey God joyfully and without fear or condemnation!

I just read the first chapter of How Can I Change? by C.J. Mahaney & Robin Boisvert and I understand more that perfection and maturity is our goal (Matthew 5:48). We cannot attain it in this life, but nonetheless it MUST be our pursuit--a joyful, hopeful pursuit (1 John 3:2-3)!

Help me Lord to make perfection and maturity a joyful and hopeful pursuit!

All Does Not Yet Gleam

This life, therefore, is
not righteousness but growth in righteousness,
not health but healing,
not being but becoming,
not rest but exercise.

We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it;
the process is not yet finished but it is going on;
this is not the end but it is the road.
all does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified.

-Martin Luther

HT: How Can I Change? CJ Mahaney & Robin Boisvert

Gospel Driven Sanctification

I would recommend the article Gospel-Driven Sanctification by Jerry Bridges to anyone who has struggled with performance-based Christian living. I'm posting a very brief overview. Hope you read the whole article!

"Early in my Christian life I heard someone say, "The Bible was not given to increase your knowledge but to guide your conduct." Later I came to realize that this statement was simplistic at best and erroneous at worst....

There is an element of truth in this statement.... It is, indeed, to be obeyed and practically applied in our daily lives. As James says, "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves" (James 1:22).

With my new insight... I began diligently to seek to obey [the Bible]. "[T]he pursuit of holiness"... became my primary goal in life. Unfortunately, I made two mistakes. First, I assumed the Bible was something of a rulebook and that all I needed to do was to learn what it says and go do it. I knew nothing of the necessity of depending on the Holy Spirit for his guidance and enablement...

...Evangelicals commonly think today that the gospel is only for unbelievers.... ...[A]s believers, we need to hear the message of discipleship. We need to learn how to live the Christian life and be challenged to go do it. That's what I believed and practiced in my life and ministry for some time. It is what most Christians seem to believe.

As I see it, the Christian community is largely a performance-based culture today. And the more deeply committed we are to following Jesus, the more deeply ingrained the performance mindset is. We think we earn God's blessing or forfeit it by how well we live the Christian life.

Gradually over time.... I learned that Christians need to hear the gospel all of their lives because it is the gospel that continues to remind us that our day-to-day acceptance with the Father is not based on what we do for God but upon what Christ did for us in his sinless life and sin-bearing death. I began to see that we stand before God today as righteous as we ever will be, even in heaven, because he has clothed us with the righteousness of his Son. Therefore, I don't have to perform to be accepted by God. Now I am free to obey him and serve him because I am already accepted in Christ (see Rom. 8:1). My driving motivation now is not guilt but gratitude.

Yet even when we understand that our acceptance with God is based on Christ's work, we still naturally tend to drift back into a performance mindset. Consequently, we must continually return to the gospel. To use an expression of the late Jack Miller, we must "preach the gospel to ourselves every day." For me that means I keep going back to Scriptures such as Isaiah 53:6, Galatians 2:20, and Romans 8:1. It means I frequently repeat the words from an old hymn, "My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.""

I was referenced to this article by Carolyn McCulley's blog Radical Womanhood. She is doing a single women's discipleship group at her church and posting an overview of each session with related articles. This article was listed in Session Four.

Dependent Responsibility

"We are responsible before God to obey His Word, to put to death the sins in our lives.... At the same time, we do not have the ability within ourselves to carry out this responsibility. We are in fact totally dependent upon the enabling power of the Holy Spirit... we are both responsible and dependent." ~Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate

Interposed His Precious Blood

This is one of my all-time favorite hymns. Aren't the words so rich! All of the lyrics are beautiful, but my favorite stanza is highlighted. The verses before and after the highlighted part are a close second.

I think it's so exciting to sing words that have been sung for 100 of years--it makes me feel connected to the history of faith and perseverance of God's people!! I think a hymn should be sung at every church service!

Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
by Robert Robinson, 1758

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood;
How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

Twenty-Two Questions

These are the twenty-two questions members of John Wesley's/George Whitefield Holy Club asked themselves every day in their private devotions. What excellent questions to ask ourselves every day. I don't really think I could answer in the correct way to very many, but they don't feel condemnatory; rather, they seem purifying, cleansing, and challenging. They almost seem like a protection against spiritual pride and also at the same time, spiritual apathy. May God keep me humbly in balance and on guard against both.

1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression than I am better than I really am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?
2. Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?
3. Do I confidentially pass on to another what I was told to me in confidence?
4. Can I be trusted?
5. Am I a slave to dress, friends, work or habits?
6. Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?
7. Did the Bible live in me today?
8. Do I give it time to speak to me every day?
9. Am I enjoying prayer?
10. When did I last speak to someone else of my faith?
11. Do I pray about the money I spend?
12. Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?
13. Do I disobey God in anything?
14. Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?
15. Am I defeated in any part of my life?
16. Am I jealous impure, critical, irritable, touchy or distrusting?
17. How do I spend my spare time?
18. Am I proud?
19. Do I thank God that I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisees who despised the publican?
20. Is there anyone I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold a resentment toward or disregard? If so, what am I doing about it?
21. Do I grumble or complain constantly?
22. Is Christ real to me?