I have a read a couple of thought provoking articles lately on knowing and loving the lost- here are some highlights. 

It is interesting to think about how we view our culture and the unbelievers we know.  As we are passionate about the glory of God we should indeed be stirred by the sin we see around us.  Yet even as anger rises in us in zeal for our God, compassion and love should simultaneously pour forth.  This is not an easy thing but I believe it is to be our goal.

Josh Harris in a post entitled, “Do You Know Them?“  Out of a study on 1 Corinthians 8 and 9 Harris made the following observations:

The gospel advances when we’re more concerned with reaching the lost than protecting our rights.

Paul said that everything he did was for the sake of the gospel (verse 23). He made himself a servant so that he could win more men and women to the gospel (verse 19). Over the next few days, I want to consider three things we learn from Paul’s example about winning the lost. The first is this: (more…)

Justin Taylor at Between Two Worlds is currently posting a series from David Powlison’s book Seeing with New Eyes.  The chapter he is excerpting from is specifically focused on the issue of desires and lusts.  Here are some quotes-

From the Introduction-  

What do you crave, want, pursue, wish, long for, hope to get, feel you need, or passionately desire? God has an interpretation of this that cuts to the marrow of who you are and what you live for. He sees our hearts as an embattled kingdom ruled either by one kind of desire or by another kind. On the one hand, what lusts of the flesh hijack your heart from God’s rule? On the other hand, what holy passions express your love for God? Our desires are not a given, but a fundamental choice. Desires are most often unruly, disorderly, inordinate affections for XYZ, a good thing that I insanely need. Sometimes they are natural affections for xyz, made sane and orderly by subordination to passionate love for God that claims my heart, soul, mind, and might. Our desires are often idolatrous cravings to get good gifts (overthrowing or ignoring the Giver). Sometimes they are intense desires for the Giver himself as supremely more important than whatever good gifts we might gain or lose from his hand.

Christ’s apostles have the greatest confidence that only the resources of the Gospel of grace and truth possess sufficient depth and power to change us in the ways we most need changing. The mercies of God work to forgive and then to change what is deeply evil, but even more deeply curable by God’s hand and voice. The in-working power of grace qualitatively transforms the very desires that psychologists assume are hardwired, unchangeable, morally neutral givens.

From Questions 1:

1. How does the New Testament commonly talk about what’s wrong with people?

Lusts of the flesh (cravings or pleasures) is a summary term for what is wrong with us in God’s eyes. In sin, people turn from God to serve what they want. By grace, people turn to God from their cravings. According to the Lord’s assessment, we all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind (Eph. 2:3). Those outside of Christ are thoroughly controlled by want they want. (“Of course I live for money, reputation, success, looks, and love. What else is there to live for?”) And the most significant inner conflict in Christians is between what the Spirit wants and what we want.

I would add here that it seems that even as believers we continue to do what we want- that is- we are driven by our greatest desire.  For the believer this desire is to be driven by the Spirit and centered in God and His pleasure.

I think this will be worth keeping up on so try to remember to check back at Between Two Worlds.

This week Brad pointed me to an article by John Piper about an experience he had hearing the voice of God. 

It is not really something I can pull quotes from so you’ll have to read the whole thing yourself (you can read this article here- there is also an option of listening to him read it). 

It is written in a way to get your attention and in the end I was challenged to view my Bible reading in a different light.  Just make sure your read the whole thing. 

I know many of us immensely enjoyed and benefited from our recent study of “Living the Cross-Centered Life.”  I ran accross this article by C.J. Mahaney in the recent edition of the Boundless webzine that may serve as a helpful reminder of our study.  It is entitled “Interagating the Legalist Within.”  Here are a couple of quotes.

Perhaps you have simply drifted from the message that saved you. If you lack passion for God, if you sometimes wonder where the joy went, then consider: Are you still clinging to the gospel? Whether you grew up in church or were saved on the streets, you were saved by the same simple message: Christ died for your sins.

How quickly we drift from this essential message! We begin basing our relationship with God on our performance. We want to substitute our works — our Bible reading, our church attendance, our church participation — for Christ’s finished work. We easily fall into the subtle but serious trap of legalism, because every one of us has a legalist lurking within.

In other words, a legalist is anyone who behaves as if he or she can earn God’s approval and forgiveness through performance. At its heart legalism is self-atonement for the purpose of self-glorification and ultimately self-worship. Many of us (and I include myself here) can approach legalism casually. But legalism is serious and it is deadly.

There is hope for us in the gospel. The gospel helps us break free from legalism. The gospel takes my eyes off myself and puts them on God. So in your fight against the legalist within, remember the cross. Recall your conversion. Review your hope.

Only in the sure and certain hope of the gospel can we find again that fullness of God-centered joy, passion, and gratitude. You began with the gospel, so stick with the gospel.

Here are a couple of quotes from the Desiring God blog on the dangers of Television.  While Piper may overstate his case a bit I think there is truth in his statements and a warning to be considered. 

 From “Take Care How You Listen! Part 2“:

It astonishes me how many Christians watch the same banal, empty, silly, trivial, titillating, suggestive, immodest TV shows that most unbelievers watch–and then wonder why their spiritual lives are weak and their worship experience is shallow with no intensity.

From “Advice to Pastors: How to Help Your People Be More Satisfied in God“:

Help your people to turn off the television. Few things in our culture are more spiritually numbing than the television. Even the so-called “good” shows are by and large banal and low-minded and anything but cultivating of a rich, deep capacity to enjoy God. And when you add to that the barrage of suggestive advertisements that accompany virtually every program, I do not wonder why so many of our professing Christians are spiritually incapable of experiencing high thoughts and deep emotions.

From “The Children, The Church, and the Chosen“:

Fathers are worked to a frazzle and so are too dogged to spend quality time with children; mothers are lured away from their little children to the work force; children have their own activities, and the one thing that pulls them all to the same room makes zombies out of them all: the television.

Television is one of those things that can be a gift of God but can also very easily become a vehicle for our sinful hearts to express and indulge themselves.  We must learn to be discerning regarding both the quantity and the quality of the television we view. 

May we live carefully and purposefully for the glory of Christ and the enjoyment of God.

A friend of mine, Sean Higgins, recently posted some thoughts on humility that were inspired by Henry Scougal.  Because of the persistence of pride in my own life I am eager to jump on anything that can be of help in killing it.  I find this to be helpful stuff.

I am humbled that I am not very humble. I recently read Henry Scougal’s Life of God in the Soul of Man and I was ashamed to recognize so little of the supernatural life in mine, at least at some times. This void became especially evident as he described divinely produced humility.

Humility imports a deep sense of our own meanness, with hearty and affectionate acknowledgment of our owing all that we are to the diving bounty; which is always accompanied with a profound submission to the will of God, and great deadness toward the glory of the world and applause of men. (p.50)

So a humble heart is one that is 1) poor in spirit, 2) thankful, 3) submissive, and 4) for lack of a better word, unaware. These are four things that currently need considerable cultivation.

Not only is there great need and reason for humility, there is great benefit in it.

The proud and arrogant person is a trouble to all that converse with him, but most of all unto himself: everything is enough to vex him; but scarce any thing sufficient to content and please him. (p.73)

The proud person is a pain in the neck to others. They can never serve him as he thinks he deserves and it is his work to correct their miscalculation. Worse, he is the biggest pain to himself. Those who are great in their own eyes can’t help but disappointment themselves. And rather than increase joy, pride reduces the sources of happiness to one and locks him away in discontent. Not only that,

…the humble person hath the advantage when he is despised, that none can think more meanly of him than he doth of himself; and therefore he is not troubled at the matter, but can easily bear those reproaches which wound the other to the soul. (p.73)

The proud are busy defending themselves and their self-presumed importance. They don’t have time to listen and respond to every question as an attack. If they realized they weren’t so special, it would be no surprise to be treated especially bad.

Being proud is a labor of disillusion and futility. Therefore, I am praying for a decrease of vanity, an increase of humility, and more of the life of Christ in my soul.

Perhaps you see signs of pride and the need for humility in your life with increasing clarity as you read this.  Go to the cross- the only hope for killing our pride and the most compelling reason for humility in our lives.

Have you ever wondered why God doesn’t sanctify us immediately?  Have you ever wondered why God doesn’t sanctify people around you more quickly?  This is a perplexing question if you stop and think about it.  I ran accross a post by Justin Taylor today in which he quotes John Newton on this subject. 

All of us battle indwelling sin- all of us are faced with conflicting desires within our souls.  Listen to how Newton describes this in the life of the Christian-

Though he knows that communion with God is his highest privilege, he too seldom finds it so; on the contrary, if duty, conscience, and necessity did not compel, he would leave the throne of grace unvisited from day to day. He takes up the Bible, conscious that it is the fountain of life and true comfort; yet perhaps, while he is making the reflection, he feels a secret distaste, which prompts him to lay it down, and give him preference to a newspaper.” [You could substitute the word "website"!]

As we meet with seemingly slow progress in our pursuit of holiness, it is precious and comforting to know that this too is part of God’s wise and gracious plan.  Here are several designs of God in this that Newton lists-

By these exercises he teaches us more truly to know and feel the utter depravity and corruption of our whole nature, that we are indeed defiled in every part.

His method of salvation is likewise hereby exceedingly endeared to us: we see that it is and must be of grace, wholly of grace; and that the Lord Jesus Christ, and his perfect righteousness, is and must be our all in all.

His power likewise, in maintaining his own work notwithstanding our infirmities, temptations, and enemies, is hereby displayed in the clearest light; his strength is manifested in our weakness.

Satan likewise is more remarkably disappointed and put to shame, when he finds bounds set to his rage and policy, beyond which he cannot pass; and that those in whom he finds so much to work upon, and over whom he so often prevails for a season, escape at last out of his hands. He casts them down, but they are raised again; he wounds them, but they are healed; he obtains his desire to sift them as wheat, but the prayer of their great Advocate prevails for the maintenance of their faith.

Farther, by what believers feel in themselves they learn by degrees how to warn, pity, and bear with others. A soft, patient, and compassionate spirit, and a readiness and skill in comforting those who are cast down, is not perhaps attainable in any other way.

And, lastly, I believe nothing more habitually reconciles a child of God to the thought of death, than the wearisomeness of this warfare. Death is unwelcome to nature;–but then, and not till then, the conflict will cease. Then we shall sin no more. The flesh, with all its attendant evils, will be laid in the grave. Then the soul, which has been partaker of a new and heavenly birth, shall be freed from every incumbrance, and stand perfect perfect in the Redeemer’s righteousness before God in glory.

This article by Al Mohler is an interesting read.  It hits on thought-provoking topics such as the over programmed lives of children today, the priority of the church, and the danger of over-segregating the church based on age. 

Reading the article made me grateful for the many families in our body who make church involvement a priority and truly enjoy being together as they worship our great God.  The joy of being with the body and functioning according to God’s design is effective in extinguishing any regret we might feel in missing out on the many other activities that vie for our time.  The gospel of Jesus Christ reorients our priorities as it opens our eyes to what is truly of value- knowing and enjoying God.

Below is an excerpt from the conclusion of Mohler’s article.

When “church time” is seen as a competitor to “family time,” something is wrong at church. When family members hardly see each other at church activities, the congregation needs to take a quick inventory of its concept of ministry.

At the same time, when Christian parents take their kids to Little League games rather than worship on the Lord’s Day, these parents teach their children that team sports are more important than the worship of God.

Every kid has a “thing” going on virtually all the time. That is the condition of life today, it seems. But when that “thing” keeps the child — or the whole family — away from church, we need to name that thing what it is . . . at best a snare, at worst an idol.