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If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings (Adoniram Judson).

From How Few There Are Who Die So Hard: The Cost of Bringing Christ to Burma.

“What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And he answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him (Matthew 21:28-32).

In the mind of a first century Jew, prostitutes and tax collectors were the worst sinners in the world. They were the outcasts, the rodents of society. Things haven’t changed much in our time. Prostitution, in the minds of most, ranks among the greatest of disrespectable sins. But Jesus had some shocking words for the respected individuals of his time: “The tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.” (more…)

Why do I have such a hard time trusting Christ, without whom there is no joy and in whom all joy abides? Why would I seek water from any other fountain? They are but broken cisterns, but, in him, life wells up so abundantly that it cannot help but to pour forth over everything in his presence, like a tidal wave bursting out onto a desert, bringing life to a desolate land.

Is that not enough? Will those who are thirsty say to the sea, “You are not enough”? Do those who are hungry curse the bread which has been given to them? What traveler who is weary refuses a bed on which to rest?

Why are you downcast, O my soul? Hope in God!

The bride eyes not her garment,
But her dear Bridegroom’s face;
I will not gaze at glory
But on my King of grace.

Anne Cousin, The Sands of Time are Sinking

A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless (Tim Keller, The Reason for God xvii).

I have struggled with much of my own doubt. Doubt is painful. It blinds your eyes to Christ, and it robs you of your joy. It causes you to question God. It makes the small joys sin offers seem great (Genesis 3:1-6). However, as painful as it has been, and as much as I have stumbled in the midst of doubt, I am glad for much of it. When Jesus predicted Peter’s faithlessness, he commanded him, “When you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32). I have learned invaluable lessons through some of my hardest nights. To doubters, from a doubter, here are some of the things I have learned. (more…)

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are precious to me not because they turn my life into a string of successes but because they keep me from collapsing under my string of failures (John Piper, Radical Effects of the Resurrection).

• • •

Some professing Christians . . . are given to a grievous censorious and critical attitude toward everything and everybody. As one man I knew has said, “Some people are born in the objective case, the contrary gender and the bilious mood.”. . . For one to profess to know Christ and have real religion and at the same time to manifest a sour, critical, negative attitude is disgusting and ab­horrent even to the ungodly. Certainly anyone with such an unsavory nature could never hope to be a “savour of life unto life” (Bill Piper, Dead Men Made Alive).

If righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose (Galatians 2:21).

One of the things I like most about Martin Luther is that he was a sinner.  He was shockingly honest in his writing about his own sinfulness, and he needed to be for the sake of people who constantly forget that Christ died for the ungodly.  Let me give an example of what I mean:

If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter, are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign (Sämmtliche Schriften, Letter 99, emphasis added).

And Luther was no imaginary sinner.  He wrote this questionable advice to a younger friend, Jerome Weller, “Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles.”

That doesn’t mean Luther took sin lightly.  He often lamented over his indwelling sin.  His great sinfulness, his recognition of it, and his despair over it made him a good companion to sinful people.  And his understanding that God was the only one who could free him from his sin made him totally reliant on God and his grace, just like Augustine a millennium before him who prayed, “Command what you will, and will what you command!”  Indeed, Luther was an Augustinian monk, so he was likely quite familiar with this famous passage from the Confessions.  Luther wrote of his own struggles:

I sit here at ease, hardened and unfeeling—alas! praying little, grieving little for the Church of God, burning rather in the fierce fires of my untamed flesh. It comes to this: I should be afire in the spirit; in reality I am afire in the flesh, with lust, laziness, idleness, sleepiness. It is perhaps because you have all ceased praying for me that God has turned away from me . . . For the last eight days I have written nothing, nor prayed nor studied, partly from self-indulgence, partly from another vexatious handicap . . . I really cannot stand it any longer . . . Pray for me, I beg you, for in my seclusion here I am submerged in sins.

Perhaps Luther’s deep understanding that the gospel was solely for sinners made him so free to talk about his sinfulness.  As he himself once said, “Sin cannot tear you away from [Christ], even though you commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many murders.”  The church could use more sinners like Luther.

His dying words fit his life and teaching so well, “We are beggars.  This is true.”

I was working on my application for Bethlehem College & Seminary and in answering the conversion question was looking over some of the posts from my old blog.  The following comes from two posts, one I made on October 15, 2005 and the other on October 22.  What wonders God was doing in me during that time in my life!

• • •

I really don’t like being emo on this thing.  Every once in a while I’ll post something emo at night and wise up in the morning and delete it.  For one thing, this just isn’t the place.  But for another thing, I really just don’t like openning up anyway.

Because of that, I’m not going to ramble and blah blah and tell you what’s going on in this post because honestly I don’t want you to know.  And in fact, I really don’t know what’s going on myself.  Nothing major has happened in my life recently, no tragedies to speak of, but somehow God’s managed to take away my secular crutch anyway.  I’ve been leaning on myself for far too long.  Well, without my crutch, my thoughts have been seasoned with doubts and despair.  I’ve spent much more time in prayer and in the Word and on fundamental theology recently than I had been doing for the past few years.  I think part of it may be due to The City of God.  And part of it is due to a friend I feel God had to have put in my life who’s been relying on me for answers I do not have.  But that can’t be all of it.  It could be due to brain chemistry, but it doesn’t feel like it.  I just feel like I haven’t allowed God to do anything in my life for the past couple of years and now all the sudden he’s doing it whether I want him to or not.  That’s exactly how it feels, it’s like this was forced on me.  I find it very difficult to find happiness in God.  I know all of the theology well enough to know what I should, but I either can’t or just won’t, and probably it’s both.

Anyway, all of this is even more than I wanted to say.  Don’t call or ask.  I don’t want this to sound like I’m all gloomy these days.  There have been days in the past month when I’ve felt more alive than I have since junior high, and it’s been wonderful and undeserved.  But this is one of those times at the end of the joy when I swing the other way, into doubts and anxiety.  The point of this post is a request for prayer.  I want to want to have satisfaction in God, but I’m having such a hard time giving up my secular desires.  And that’s the weird thing.  It’s not that my secular desires aren’t being fulfilled.  On the contrary, I’m rarely as secularly happy.  For instance, I really want to be remembered after death, and I know I can accomplish enough in my life to receive praise for years to come.  I don’t doubt it at all.  It scares me to death that I want that so badly and am currently heading in that direction though.  Maybe that’s what’s been getting to me.  Augustine’s been showing me that no matter what we accomplish, we eventually die, so failure comes either in life or with death.  And we’ve been doing Ecclesiastes in church, and it’s all very similar.  And that’s not all of it but it’s probably a big part.  I know I can be “successful”, and I want success badly, but at the same time I know I’m not supposed to want that and that success won’t give God glory or bring me satisfaction, so I’m terrified.  Anyway, if you could, pray for Grace.

Thanks.

• • •

I listened to 4 sermons on Sunday, 2 sermons yesterday, and I’m about to listen to at least one more tonight. I’ve been reading from Matthew, Romans, and 1 John… as well as The City of God and various sites on apologetics, and I’ll probably read some Psalms in a while. I’ve been listening to Indelible Grace III and It’s Hard to Find a Friend, and The Only Reason I Feel Secure is in the mail. I’ve spent much more time in prayer recently and cleaned some of the hatred and fear out of my heart.

And.. it’s not getting me anywhere. For some reason I think I thought I could fill myself with theology, shut off my emotions, and live a productive and useful life. So when my emotions started coming back, half of me wanted to enjoy them, while the other half just wanted to do everything possible to shove them back into place, including falling to temptation and allowing fear and hatred into my heart.. and just plain becoming too busy to deal with them.

It’s insane because I know all the theology I should need to know to be okay. I know that God’s the only thing that’ll give me ultimate Joy and satisfaction. I know that worldly things will never fill me! But I can’t find a way to force myself to feel satisfied in God. The theology just isn’t doing it anymore. And I know that people suffer because this world sucks and we’ve fallen, and I used to be fine with that, but that knowledge isn’t enough anymore. And I know we find satisfaction and love by making much of God, but the much I’ve made hasn’t helped, and I don’t have the strength to do more.

And this is why I don’t think it’s working anymore. Everything I’ve been doing, although acts of the City of God in appearance, have all been worldly in motivation. I want to learn because I want to know. And I want to know so I can serve myself while in this life. And that scares me to death, but I can’t change it. I’ve tried, and I can’t. O, Grace of God! Irresistible, Indelible, Infinite, and Incomprehensible! I need it, and I long for it. For without it, I’m a sinful and loathful, self serving hypocrite.

The most bizarre thing about combining Calvinism and Christian Hedonism seems to be that I know what I should want, but it seems completely up to God as to whether I will want it. What is there I can do! Just beg for Mercy and Grace and hope it’ll come? Although I know I beg for selfish reasons! And I know I’ve received far more Mercy than I deserve.

Augustine says in this life we have hope of future salvation. So perhaps hope is as close as I can get to satisfaction for now. Probably so, but I’m impatient and want more than hope.

But the families which do not live by faith seek their peace in the earthly advantages of this life; while the families which live by faith look for those eternal blessings which are promised, and use as pilgrims such advantages of time and of earth as do not fascinate and divert them from God, but rather aid them to endure with greater ease, and to keep down the number of those burdens of the corruptible body which weigh upon the soul. Thus the things necessary for this mortal life are used by both kinds of men and families alike, but each has its own peculiar and widely different aim in using them. The earthly city, which does not live by faith, seeks an earthly peace, and the end it proposes, in the well-ordered concord of civic obedience and rule, is the combination of men’s wills to attain the things which are helpful to this life. The heavenly city, or rather the part of it which sojourns on earth and lives by faith, makes use of this peace only because it must, until this mortal condition which necessitates it shall pass away.
- Augustine

I’ll take something to believe, something with long sleeves, ’cause it’s unpredictable. Now, Jesus said he’d fill my needs, but my heart still bleeds, he’s just not physical
- Bazan

What does it mean to remember God’s faithfulness?  To the Psalmists it not only meant remembering God’s personal faithfulness (Psalm 54:7) but also remembering the legacy of God’s faithfulness to countless others before them.

I will remember the deeds of the LORD;
yes, I will remember your wonders of old. . . .
You with your arm redeemed your people,
the children of Jacob and Joseph. . . .
You led your people like a flock
by the hand of Moses and Aaron (Psalm 77).

God has given us a rich history of his faithfulness to take confidence in.