“Oh to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will(!) to be be so filled with the presence of the Lord Jesus, so one with Him, that His life may flow through our veins; that He may borrow our lips to speak His messages, borrow our faces to look His looks of patience and love, our hands to do His service and our feet to tread His weary journeys.  The dear Master can never be weary again by the side of any well, but we may be weary by the side of many for Him.

“In times of discouragement it is a great help to remember that the Lord’s work is not our work for the Lord, but the Lord’s own work through us and others. ‘He will not fail, nor be discouraged.’”

From Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission: The Growth of a Work of God, by Dr. Howard Taylor and Mrs. Howard Taylor (1918, first edition), pp. 408-409.

HT: Kaseyiscool–noooquestion!

A dear brother and colleague in ministry has been following along with the “celebrity pastor” discussion we’ve been having.  He sent me a gem of a quote from the ‘good Doctor’ that I thought apropos:

“But let me emphasize the point that this is something that is important for the pew as well as for the pulpit. It was not because of anything that Paul had done or said that certain people in Corinth said, ‘I am of Paul’. The trouble was entirely in the people. And such trouble is still with the people. Do not be too hard on the preacher.”

Lloyd-Jones, D. M.  Romans, An Exposition of Chapter I The Gospel of God (Carlisle: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1985), 211.

Now, this is by no means all that needs to be said on the important issue of responsibility for combating anything resembling “celebrity culture” in evangelical circles.  Check here for another quote relevant to the matter.  As my last post attempts to state, there’s responsibility or blame for every sector.  Simply stating some other party is more responsible without facing our respective responsibility strikes me as a bit of blame-shifting, or as our Master so eloquently put it, blowing at specks in the eyes of others while attempting to blink with logs in our own.

“For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.” Hebrews 12:10 (ESV)

Perhaps a clear mind is our greatest need in the time of suffering.  We’re tempted to misinterpret events, actions, words, and motives–including God’s.  We may even think that our suffering has the final word, a word of doom and despair, a word of defeat and dereliction.  Then the critical question becomes, “Is that true?  Am I interpreting my suffering correctly?”  We seldom stop to question the false messages our suffering intimates.  The pain is real, so we too quickly conclude the inferences we make are real.

Thomas Brooks (1608-1680) offers us a helpful, mind-clearing word about our afflictions and how to understand them.  Consider his words slowly:

Satan seeks to draw the soul into sin by presenting the sufferings that daily attend those who walk in holiness.  But all the afflictions that attend the people of God turn out to their profit and glorious advantage.  Afflictions are a looking glass that show the ugly face of sin.  They are God’s furnace to cleanse and preserve His people.  Saints thrive most internally when they are most afflicted.  Manasseh’s chain was more profitable to him than his crown.  Luther could not understand some Scriptures until he was in affliction.  God’s house of correction is his school of instruction.  Afflictions lift up the soul to a fuller enjoyment of God, and more sweet and full enjoyment of his blessed self.  They keep the heart humble and tender, and by experience saints find that they can embrace the cross as others do the world’s crown.  Afflictions inflame love that is cold, quicken decaying faith, and put life into withering hope.  The more the saints are beaten with the hammer of affliction, the more they trumpet God’s praises.  Adversities abate the loveliness of the world that entices us and the lusts that incite us.  They afflict, but never harm.  They are momentary; sorrow may abide for a night, but joy comes in the morning.  This short storm will end in an everlasting calm.  We must measure afflictions by their outcome, not how they hurt.  The misery that attends wickedness is far greater.  O the gnawing of conscience that attends wickedness!  There is no peace for the wicked.  There are snares in their mercies and curses attend their comforts.  What is a fine suit of clothes with the plague?  What is golden cup with poison?  What is a silk stocking on a broken leg?  Ah the horrors and terrors, the tremblings that attend their souls!  (from Voices from the Past, p. 288)

“Measure afflictions by their outcome, not how they hurt.”  Thabiti, in your next season of pain, which will surely come, remember this!

From Richard Baxter’s A Christian Directory, quoted in Voices from the Past:

Do not think of God’s mercy with diminishing thoughts, for his mercy is as great as his power.  There is great advantage to the soul that has a proper estimate of his goodness.  It makes God appear more wonderful, and you will love him more readily and abundantly.  Affections will follow the understanding.  If you think God is against you and delights in your misery, it is impossible for you to love him.  The great reason many do not love God more is because they look at him in an odious shape, and tremble at the thought of him.  Doing this strips God of his divine nature in our thoughts.  We must write his love deep in our understanding.  When we consider his mercy and lovingkindness, our thoughts of God will be sweet and delightful.  We are bidden to love and delight in him above all.  He is infinitely and inconceivably good.  This will draw you to God as a magnet toward iron.  If you conceive of God as ten thousand times more gracious and loving than any friend you have in the world, it will make you love him above all.  This takes away weariness in duty, and gives more delight in prayer and meditation.  When God becomes more lovely in our eyes, it produces growth in all of our graces, and encourages further familiarity and confidence.  A clear sight of God’s merciful nature gives assurance of our happiness. If you fix deep in your understanding the natural goodness of God, even this will fall far short of God’s actual graciousness.

“The neglect of private prayer is the major cause of stagnation in the Christian life…we fall in private prayer before we ever fall in public.” ~ R.C. Sproul

Ray Ortlund, Sr. to his son, Ray Ortlund, Jr.:

“Listen, son.  Half-hearted Christians are the most miserable people of all.  They know enough to feel guilty, but they haven’t gone far enough with Christ to be happy.  Be wholehearted for him!”

That’ll preach!

What manner of love is this?!

Rude Parents Lose Their Children

Mercy Has Swallowed Up All Misery

The Unending Exploration

The Comfort of Heaven

“Now suppose both death and hell were utterly defeated.  Suppose the fight was fixed.  Suppose God took you on a crystal ball trip into your future and you saw with indubitable certainty that despite everything — your sin, your smallness, your stupidity — you could have free for the asking your whole crazy heart’s deepest desire: heaven, eternal joy.  Would you not return fearless and singing?  What can earth do to you, if you are guaranteed heaven?  To fear the worst earthly loss would be like a millionaire fearing the loss of a penny — less, a scratch on a penny.”

Peter Kreeft, Heaven (San Francisco, 1989), page 183.

Procrastination a Worship Problem

“…a habit of procrastination indicates a worship problem: an unwillingness to do the work that God has appointed for us, or an inability to discern what he has given us and what he has not. The procrastinator loves to hoard her time for herself rather than work diligently in it on the errands and tasks God gives her. She would rather blame the chaos outside of her than the chaos in her heart.”

–Staci Eastin in The Organized Heart: A Woman’s Guide to Conquering Chaos (Cruciform Press, 2011)

My Love for God Depends on My Knowing God’s Love for Me

“You cannot love God if you are under the continual secret suspicion that he is really your enemy! … You simply cannot love God unless you know and understand how much he loves you. … In the gospel, you can come to know that God truly loves you through Christ. When you have this assurance, you can even love your enemies, because you know that you are reconciled to God. You know that God’s love will make people’s hatred of you work together for your good.”
— Walter Marshall (The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification: Growing in Holiness by Living in Union with Christ)

“Labor to get a sense of the vanity of this world. And labor to be much acquainted with heaven.”
–Jonathan Edwards

Doesn’t it seem that all too often we do the exact opposite?  We labor to imagine vain thoughts of heaven, while toiling to be acquainted with this world.  We sometimes voluntarily and sometimes quite unconsciously participate in that vain striving after the wind.  We set our delights on this world of shadows, forgetting that ineffable world to come, which is the real world of substance.  Or, Lord, let us be more heavenly minded.  Let the things of this earth grow strangely, steadily, happily dim in the light of His glory and grace.

My soul has been, I trust, in some measure, perhaps by increments and fine gradations, freed from the gravitational pull of this world by a sermon I listened to yesterday.  It’s from the 2003 Desiring God National Conference, which focused on the life and thought of Jonathan Edwards.  Sam Storms preached a sermon entitled “Joy’s Eternal Increase: Edwards on the Beauty of Heaven.”  I think you’ll leave this world at moments if you give it prayerful consideration.

Storms began with four propositions regarding a consistent focus on the beauty of heaven:

1. A contemplative focus on the beauty of heaven frees us from the excessive dependence upon earthly wealth and comfort.

2. A contemplative focus on the beauty of heaven enables us to respond appropriately to the injustices of this life.

3. A contemplative focus on the beauty of heaven produces the fruit of endurance and perseverance now. “The strength to endure present suffering is the fruit of meditating on future satisfaction.”

4. A contemplative focus on the beauty of heaven is where we see the essence of true religion, where we learn the nature of genuine religious affection.

Then he continued with about a 35-40 minute mediation on the nature of heaven and the joy that awaits all those who believe in Christ and look to His coming.  Here’s a snippet from around 30 minutes:

Our experience of God will never reach its consummation. We will never finally arrive, as if some day in heaven you will arrive on this last mountain peak only to discover that there’s emptiness ahead of us. Our experience of God will never become stale. it will deepen and develop and intensify and amplify and unfold and increase and broaden and balloon. Our relishing and rejoicing in God will sharpen and spread and extend and progress and mature and flower and blossom and widen and stretch and swell and snowball and inflate and lengthen and augment and advance and proliferate and accumulate and accelerate forever!

Then meditate on this nugget from Storms: “It’s one thing to be free of imperfection. It’s another thing to experience perfection perfectly.”

Or this comment from Edwards about our senses and bodies in heaven: “Every perceptive faculty shall be an inlet of delight.”

My heart sings: “Yes! Yes! Come, Lord Jesus! Bring us home!”

Over at Ref21, Carl Trueman posts a couple paragraphs from an address delivered by Geoff Thomas at Westminster.  I especially appreciated this last paragraph:

Let me exhort you to thank God if he has put you in that river of living grace. There is no greater privilege than to be a pastor-preacher. In the para-church there is extraordinary fascination and vitality (but also there can be self-promotion), and you may well be drawn into some of its ministries, but consider the rich diversity and satisfaction of the work of the local minister. He teaches the Bible to all ages and states of men and women, boys and girls. He lives on to see the fruit of his ministry in their lives. He evangelizes, visits the dying, counsels, writes, organizes, goes to people’s homes, inspires, rebukes, stirs things up and cools things down, involves himself with the affairs of his congregation and denomination, attends conferences, assemblies and serves on committees. There is no richer or happier life. Its foundation is the donation of the ascended, reigning Lord who gives some pastors and teachers. Its boundaries and priorities are defined by the apostolic conviction, “We will give ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.” Its sustenance is the divine river of grace. God never puts us where he is not present and where his grace cannot keep us. God never gives graces that he does not intend to be used for his glory and the good of his people. There is a need everywhere for sensible, caring, sound and holy ministers of the new covenant. God is their all sufficiency. May you be satisfied with him and be kept by him for long, enriching lives of Christian service. Prepare for the blessedness of such a vocation by daily appropriating your great High Priest.

Reminds me of the sacred writ:

Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant. Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. For the law appoints as high priests men who are weak; but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son, who has been made perfect forever.  The point of what we are saying is this: We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man.  (Heb. 7:22-8:2)

Enjoy Jesus your Great High Priest today.