Month: February 2015

Categories
Quotes

Win the heart, win the whole man.

A warning from Martin Luther as to why it is important to win the heart of a person:
Dear friends, a man must not insist in his rights, but must see what is useful and helpful to his brother. I would not have gone as far as you have done if I had been there. What you did was good, but you have gone too fast, for there are brothers and sisters on the other side who belong to us, and must still be won….

Faith never yields, but love is guided according to how our neighbors can grasp or follow it. There are some who can run, others who must walk, but still others who can hardly creep. Therefore we must not look on our own, but on our brother’s powers so that he that is weak in faith…may not be destroyed.

…Let us therefore throw ourselves at one another’s feet, join hands and help one another….

We must first win the hearts of the people. And that is done when I teach only the Word of God, preach only the Word of God, and if you win the heart, you win the whole man.
–Martin Luther

God, help me to bow down in humility to others, join hands, and help those who need more patience, care, and concern. Help me not run so far and so fast that I unwittingly trample over those who need more tenderness and compassion.

Categories
Christian Living

The Benefits of Deprivation

Here in America, we have been taught that we should never be deprived of anything. We’ve been led to believe that deprivation is a “bad word.” But God might be trying to teach us something different. Perhaps deprivation can actually lead to God’s Glory. As J. I. Packer tells us:

You know what kind of life it is that Christ calls you, as his disciple, to live. His own example and teaching in the Gospels make it abundantly clear. You are called to go through this world as a pilgrim, a mere temporary resident, traveling light, and willing, as Christ directs, to do what the rich young ruler refused to do: give up material wealth and the security it provides and live in a way that involves you in poverty and loss of possessions. Having your treasure in heaven, you are not to budget for treasure on earth, nor for a high standard of living—you may well be required to forego both.

You are called to follow Christ, carrying your cross.

What does that mean? Well, the only persons in the ancient world who carried a cross were condemned criminals going out to execution; each, like our Lord himself, was made to carry the cross on which he was to be crucified. So, what Christ means is that you must accept for yourself the position of such a person, in the sense that you renounce all future expectations from society and learn to take it as a matter of course if the people around you give you the cold shoulder and view you with contempt and disgust, as an alien sort of being. You may often find yourself treated in this fashion if you are loyal to the Lord Jesus Christ.

None of this, of course, is strange to any of us. We know what kind of life Christ calls us to; we often preach and talk to each other about it. But do we live it? Well, look at the churches. Observe the shortage of ministers and missionaries, especially men; the luxury goods in Christian homes; the fund-raising problems of Christian societies; the readiness of Christians in all walks of life to grumble about their salaries; the lack of concern for the old and lonely and for anyone outside the circle of “sound believers.” We are unlike the Christians of New Testament times.

Paul tells us that there is no ultimate loss or irreparable impoverishment to be feared; if God denies us something, it is only in order to make room for one or other of the things He has in mind. Are we perhaps, still assuming that a person’s life consists, partly at any rate in the things he possesses? When it comes to cheerful self-abandonment in Christ’s service we dither. Why? Out of unbelief, pure and simple.

May we learn to say with Habakkuk in face of economic ruin or any other deprivation: “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength” (Hab 3:17-19). Happy the person who can say these things and mean them!

I hope that I can learn cheerful self-abandonment in order to exalt Jesus Christ. I hope I can learn to be joyful in Jesus even when I do not find myself “rich” in the ways of the world.


        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)


Categories
Quotes

You Are To Serve as a Priest to Others

Many priests there are, and few;
many in name, and few in works.
See, therefore, how you sit in the official chair,
for the chair does not make the priest, but the priest makes the chair:
the place does not sanctify the man, but the man the place.
Not every priest is holy;
but every holy person is a priest.
–John Chrysostom

Another “workplace pastor” quote reaching all the way back to 400 A.D.
Chrysostom realized that each of us has the role to be a holy person that serves others, even if our paycheck wasn’t written by a church. Your role is to be a holy person, and therefore to serve as a workplace pastor for those who you are around everyday.

Categories
Quotes

Judgment is Coming

People who do not actually read the Bible confidently assure us that when we move from the Old Testament to the New, the theme of divine judgment fades into the background. But if we examine the New Testament, even in the most cursory way, we find at once that the Old Testament emphasis on God’s action as judge, far from being reduced, is actually intensified. The entire New Testament is overshadowed by the certainty of a coming day of universal judgment, and by the problem thence arising: How may we sinners get right with God while there is yet time?
–J. I. Packer

So thankful that God has made a way!

Categories
Christian Living

I Became a Christian and All My Problems Vanished!

“I Became a Christian and All My Problems Vanished!”
…ummm, I Don’t Believe You.

In fact, “I don’t believe you” is too mild a statement, but I didn’t want to offend you by writing what I really think about this statement. “I became a Christian, and now I don’t have anymore problems,” let’s just say that a person who says this or believes that it will come true is someone who is either a deceiver or deceived. Some who say it are lying because they think that is what they are supposed to say. Others believe it will come true because they have bought into the lie.

Does the Bible give us assurances that Jesus will walk with us through difficult times? Yes.
Does the Bible promise us that once we become Christians we will no longer have difficult times? Absolutely not.

In fact, Jesus says just the opposite – that trials and difficulties and persecutions will come, and that some of these will come directly as a result of following Him. So to say that becoming a Christian will make life easy is to attack the truthfulness of God’s own words.

Taking up one’s cross daily is difficult.
Engaging in spiritual warfare with the enemy is difficult.
Dealing with real persecution because of faith is difficult.

      …great assurances are scriptural and true—praise God, they are!
      But it is possible so to stress them, and so to play down the rougher side of the Christian life—the daily chastening, the endless war with sin and Satan, the periodic walk in darkness—as to give the impression that normal Christian living is a perfect bed of roses, a state of affairs in which everything in the garden is lovely all the time, and problems no longer exist—or, if they come, they have only to be taken to the throne of grace, and they will melt away at once.
      This is to suggest that the world, the flesh, and the devil will give us no serious trouble once we are Christians; nor will our circumstances and personal relationships ever be a problem to us; nor will we ever be a problem to ourselves. Such suggestions are mischievous, however, because they are false.
      Of course, an equally lopsided impression can be given the other way. You can so stress the rough side of the Christian life, and so play down the bright side, as to give the impression that Christian living is for the most part grievous and gloomy—hell on earth, in hope of heaven here-after! No doubt this impression has from time to time been given; no doubt the ministry we are examining here is partly a reaction against it. But it must be said that of these two extremes of error, the first is the worse, just to the extent that false hopes are a greater evil than false fears.
      The second error will, in the mercy of God, lead only to the pleasant surprise of finding that Christians have joy as well as sorrow. But the first, which pictures the normal Christian life as trouble-free, is bound to lead sooner or later to bitter disillusionment.

Life is difficult for everyone.
Life with Jesus makes for the best possible situation in this difficult life.
Life with Jesus, even though it brings in new difficulties, allows us to find His strength in the midst of the dark spots.
That is why Paul can say… Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

The Christian life is full of joy because of Jesus. But let us never deceive others by telling them the Christian life is trouble-free, because we never want someone to become disillusioned about Jesus because of us.


        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)