Working Out My Salvation

Philippians 2:12

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling;  (NASB)

Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. (NLT)

We’re back with our annual visit to the blog Christians in Context by J. Mark Fox. Click the title below to read it on his blog, and then navigate from there to some other great articles. (We read several preparing this!)

Work out, not for, your own salvation

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. This command in Paul’s letter to the Philippians has caused many to stumble, to make an argument for works-righteousness, and even to believe that what Jesus did was not enough. That he needs my help to save me. We know that’s nonsense, and the plain meaning of this text makes perfect sense. Paul says work out your salvation. He doesn’t say work in your salvation. Or work up your salvation. Or work for your salvation! No, we are to work it out. In other words, what God has secured in you through His grace given on the basis of Jesus’ sacrifice, work it out in every way and on every day. It’s what we do in our marriages, right? Were you done when you said, “I do”? No, you were just getting started. And for the rest of your life, you are working out your marriage in fear. And sometimes with trembling!

If you are working out your salvation as a father, it means you are learning to bring up your children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. You cannot learn that without starting to do it badly. But you have to start. When my children were very young, they each had trouble learning to ride a bike. They fell. They scraped their knees. They cried. But they kept getting back on the bike until it became second nature to them. Get back on the bike, Dad, and lead your family in the things that are most important. If you are working out your salvation as a student, it means you study. You work hard. If you are working out your salvation as a brother or sister in Christ in your church family, it means that when you are offended, you don’t hold onto that. You let it go quickly, and if you can’t let it go, you go to the one who offended you and you work it out. And yes, it will require work, sacrifice, and discipline. Tim Challies had a good word on this recently:

“I want to have 10 percent body fat. I set that goal a while ago and even managed to get really close to reaching it. But eventually I found out that I want to have 10 percent body fat just a bit less than I want to have 13 percent. There’s a key difference between the two: While 13 percent requires moderate effort to gain and retain, 10 percent requires strict discipline. I soon learned I just didn’t want the goal enough to put in the effort to achieve it. I didn’t meet my desire with discipline.” Then he adds, “I often consider the people I’ve known who set an example of unusual godliness. I think of well-known Christian men who lived godly lives in the public eye and who carried out unblemished ministries. I think of unknown and unnoticed women who lived equally godly lives far outside the public eye. What did they have in common? What was the key to their holiness? I believe it was their discipline. They disciplined themselves for the highest godliness. They were spiritual athletes who ensured their highest desires supplanted their baser desires. They achieved godliness because they aimed at godliness.”

We all have work to do if we are to aim at God’s best for us. Thankfully, we are never alone. Paul adds, “for it is God who works in us both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” That is the gift that keeps on giving.

Balanced Praying

^{Romans 8:26a} In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should…  (NASB)

^{Luke 11:1} One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray…” (NIV)

 

Sunday’s piece on treating prayer like it was the same as placing a fast-food order, ended up being Tuesday morning’s piece at Thinking Out Loud. Sometimes in the quest to find pictures to accompany articles, I discover all sorts of other things from sources that end up getting used here.

This one is all about a smart phone app. However, it contained with it so many implications about what we were discussing that I decided to use it here, which also meant ‘borrowing’ the pictures that came with it. The article is titled Praying Scripture and at the end I’ll give the link for the app. Take some time to study the various elements in the graphics.

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Two years ago, I began the development of Prayer Prompter. My original concept for a prayer app was to have two separate sections, one for Scripture passages organized by topic and the other one for prayer requests. The first mockup looked like this.

Later, I changed the name of the top section to “God Speaks to Me…” which was the shortened form of “God speaks to me through His Word”. I wanted to encourage users to “hear from God” by reading passages of Scripture, thinking about them and using them as the basis for prayer.

The first few folders in the top section follow the “ACTS” prayer method; Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. ACTS has part of my prayer life as long as I can remember. It helps me to pray in an orderly and logical fashion.

Recently, I started wondering where the ACTS prayer method originated but I couldn’t find anything, at least, not until I heard about a book published in 1710 by Puritan pastor Matthew Henry, called “A Method for Prayer”. His method can be summarized as follows:

1 – “Address to God and Adoration of Him”
2 – “Confession of Sin and Declaration of Repentance”
3 – “Petition and Supplication” (for oneself)
4 – “Thanksgiving for the Mercies of God”
5 – “Intercession and Supplication to God for others”
6 – “Conclusion of our Prayers”

Do you see the ACTS pattern in his “method”? I do. The only difference is that “supplication” is broken into two parts, praying for oneself and praying for others. So, I conclude that the ACTS method for organizing prayer is more than 300 years old!

Theologian, Puritan scholar and author Dr. Joel Beeke said recently, “The Puritans prayed out of hearts saturated with Scripture. They especially delighted in turning promises into prayers. William Gurnall said, ‘Prayer is nothing but the promise reversed.’ He also said, ‘The mightier any is in the Word, the more mighty he will be in prayer.’ This pattern of praying the Scriptures culminated in Matthew Henry’s book, A Method for Prayer, where he collects hundreds of Scriptures under different headings to guide the Christian in prayer.” (An excerpt from the blog post, “Pray Like a Puritan” by Tim Challies)

So, after almost two years of working on Prayer Prompter, I just realized something that should have been obvious to me from the beginning. The top section of Prayer Prompter is all about — Are you ready for this? — praying Scripture! As a result of this amazing discovery, I am changing the title of the top section to — and this should come as no surprise! — “Praying Scripture”. I am also changing the title of the bottom section to “Petition/Intercession”. These new titles will be part of the next upgrade of Prayer Prompter which will be available in a few weeks. For new users of that upgrade, the Home screen (dashboard) will look like this:

Note: If you are already using Prayer Prompter, the upgrade will not change your existing titles but, if you want to change them yourself, check out “Get Started>How To” on the website or “How-To” in the “Help Topics section of Prayer Prompter.)

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Again, it isn’t my intention here to try to sell something; the creators won’t know this is here until it appears. But sometimes when you try to blend theology and technology, it forces you to have to think about things in a more detailed, or more unique way.

So… if you’re interested in learning more about Prayer Promoter, click here.

The Sufficiency of Scripture

After several days of writing original pieces here at C201, I went back to mining the internet for interesting topics and articles, only to strike gold. Rebecca Writes is the blog of Rebecca Stark, and one of the features on her blog is the Theological Term of the Week. So far, she’s covered about 270 such entries, going back to 2007. I encourage you to use this resource again and again. Remember that theological terms are not necessarily Biblical terms; the entries in a theological dictionary won’t always occur in your concordance, in fact the majority won’t.

After reading many recent ones, and trying to choose a sample, I ended up going to one of the older ones, on the sufficiency of scripture, and then one of the newest, on the mortification of sin. Honestly, there are so many good articles at this blog that we might do this again sometime.

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sufficiency of scripture

The principle that the words of scripture contain everything we need to know from God in order for us to be saved and to be perfectly obedient to him.

• From scripture:
  

  …from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. ( 2 Timothy 3:15-17 ESV)

• From The London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 1, Section 6:
  

  The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in the Holy Scripture, to which nothing is to be added at any time, either by new revelation of the Spirit, or by the traditions of men.

•  From Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem:
  

  The sufficiency of Scripture also tells us that nothing is required of us by God that is not commanded in Scripture either explicitly or by implication. This reminds us that the focus of our search for God’s will ought to be on Scripture, rather than on seeking guidance through prayer for changed circumstances or altered feelings or direct guidance from the Holy Spirit apart from Scripture….

  The discovery of this great truth could bring tremendous joy and peace to the lives of thousands of Christians who, spending countless hours seeking God’s will outside of Scripture, are often uncertain about whether they have found it. In fact, many Christians today have very little confidence in their ability to discover God’s will with any degree of certainty. Thus there is little striving to do God’s will (for who can know it?) and little growth in holiness before God.

  The opposite ought to be true. Christians who are convinced of the sufficiency of Scripture should begin eagerly to seek and find God’s will in Scripture. They should be eagerly and regularly growing in obedience to God, knowing great freedom and peace in the Christian life.

Learn more

1. GotQuestions.org: “What is the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture? What does it mean that the Bible is sufficient?”
2. Scott McClare: The Authority and Sufficiency of Scripture
3. Tim Challies: The Bible’s Sufficiency
4. Mark Thompson: The Sufficiency of Scripture
5. David G. Peterson: The Sufficiency of Scripture
6. Mark Dever: “God Told Me” and the Sufficiency of Scripture
7. John MacArthur: The Sufficiency of Scripture, Part 1 (mp3); The Sufficiency of Scripture, Part 2 (mp3)

Related terms:

• authority of scripture
• canon of scripture
• inerrancy of scripture
• infallibility of scripture
• inspiration of scripture
• perspicuity of scripture
• sola scriptura

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mortification (of sin)

A way of life in which a Christian takes an active role in “crushing sin from their lives … rooting it out, and depriving it of its influence”;1 a Christian’s active role in battling sinful habits in the power of the Spirit.

• From scripture:

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away:anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. (Colossians 3:5-11 ESV)

• From John Owen in The Mortification of Sin in Believers: 

[Mortification] is, then, the work of the Spirit. For, —

(1.) He is promised of God to be given unto us to do this work. The taking away of the stony heart, — that is, the stubborn, proud, rebellious, unbelieving heart, — is in general the work of mortification that we treat of. Now this is still promised to be done by the Spirit, Ezek. 11:19, 36:26, “I will give my Spirit, and take away the stony heart;” and by the Spirit of God is this work wrought when all means fail, Isa. 57:17-18.

(2.) We have all our mortification from the gift of Christ, and all the gifts of Christ are communicated to us and given us by the Spirit of Christ: “Without Christ we can do nothing,” John 15:5. All communications of supplies and relief, in the beginnings, increasings, actings of any grace whatever, from him, are by the Spirit, by whom he alone works in and upon believers. From him we have our mortification: “He is exalted and made a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance unto us,” Acts 5:31; and of our repentance our mortification is non small portion. How doth he do it? Having “received the promise of the Holy Ghost,” he sends him abroad for that end, the Spirit, as Tertullian speaks, “Vicariam navare operam,” to do the works that he had to accomplish in us.

Learn more:

1. Got Questions.org: What is mortification of sin?
2. Sinclair Ferguson: The Practice of Mortification
3. J. Ligon Duncan: Putting Sin to Death
4. John Owen :  The Mortification of Sin in Believers
5. Christopher Love: The Mortification of Sin
6. Octavius Winslow: The Believer’s Obligation to Mortify Sin
7. John MacArthur: The Mortification of Sin (pdf)

Related terms:

• progressive sanctification
• regeneration

The Value of a Soul

Tim Challies is a widely read Christian blogger, but many of you might not think of him as a devotional writer. This is however his fourth appearance here at C201. I really liked this piece, which he gave the title, And Also Much Cattle. Many of you are already familiar with the variety of Tim’s blog; for the rest of you, click through to read this one at source.

I love to receive challenges and lessons from unexpected places. Lately God has been teaching me so much through the book of Jonah. Yes, Jonah. Jonah is a book that ends in an unorthodox way. Where most books end with a satisfying conclusion, this one ends with a question mark. Where most books end with people or with God, the final word in Jonah is “cattle.” It’s all very strange. It’s all deeply challenging.

Even the context is odd. Jonah has just witnessed a miraculous city-wide revival with tens of thousands of people turning to the Lord in repentance and faith. Yet despite seeing this great work of God, Jonah’s reaction is one of anger. He is furious with God—so angry that he just wants to die. He would rather die than see these inhabitants of Nineveh call out to the Lord.

And as Jonah sits outside the city mourning the loss of a plant that had shaded him from the sun, God speaks to this rebellious prophet.

The Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

This is one of those classical biblical arguments from the lesser to the greater. God is saying, “You feel compassion for a plant. That’s good. But don’t you see how much greater people are than plants? If you pity the plant, which was here yesterday and gone today, shouldn’t you also pity people? Shouldn’t you pity them even more? And tell you what, even if you can’t bring yourself to pity these pagan people, can’t you at least muster up some sympathy for animals? Surely you don’t want me to destroy all of those animals, do you?”

God calls on Jonah to understand that he is seeing this all wrong. Jonah, the God-fearing prophet, should be rejoicing to see God save sinners. Instead he hates it. He believes that he and his fellow Jews are somehow worthy of God’s grace; he believes that all others—especially those dangerous, pagan Assyrians—are unworthy of grace.

And I think you and I are tempted to come to the end of the book and laugh at Jonah. We can roll our eyes in exasperation. “Jonah, you foolish, ignorant, xenophobic, pathetic man. Don’t you see? People are more important than plants! Only human beings are created in God’s image. Therefore nothing could have more value than people. You are a fool!” And we go our way.

Except for that question mark. We need to answer the question. You and I. Do we really believe that nothing in all the world is more valuable than people? Do we bear this out in our lives?

Jesus said: “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” He is saying that one soul is more valuable than all the treasure in the world. You could own the entire universe and you would have nothing compared to the value of a single soul. You could have the wealth of Bill Gates and add to it the treasure of Solomon, and you would be poor compared to the value of a soul.

No wonder, then, that the Bible tells us, “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Of course God desires that all people come to the knowledge of the truth! He knows they are lost and he is filled with compassion for them. His great desire is for souls to be saved because nothing is more precious. There is no greater loss than the loss of a soul.

Do we believe this? Do we really believe this? Through his Word, God asked me Jonah’s question: “I have great compassion for the souls of men and women. Do you?” Maybe you need to answer it as well.

Maybe we could sit down and walk through your week together. How did you use your time? What does the way you used your time tell you about how you value souls? Would your time show that souls are precious, more precious than anything else? More precious than your entertainment? More precious than working long hours to have a nice house and nice stuff and lots of comfort?

Maybe you could take a look at your bank statements. What would the way you use your money tell you about what you value? What would it tell about how you really value souls? How much leads directly to mission? How much leads to the healing of the bodies and souls of people created in the image of God?

What if we could listen to your prayers played back? What priorities do your prayers reflect? Are souls your great concern when you are on your knees before God?

Do you have a beautiful lawn and a flourishing garden, yet feel more pity for the grass and plants than you do for people on the other side of the fence?

There is only one thing on this earth that will survive the ages: the souls of men and women. There is nothing more valuable. And through his Word, and especially through the book of Jonah, God has been forcing me to ask, “Am I the one sitting outside the city?”

 

Link to previous C201 re-blogged articles by Tim Challies.

The Bible Speaks to Your Anger Issue

Billions and billions of people drop by Tim Challies blog every day, some of whom aren’t even Calvinists.  Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration. Tim wrote this recently under the title What The Bible Says About Anger, and you’re encouraged to click through and explore the rest of his long-running blog.

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I suppose it should come as no surprise that the Bible has a great deal to say about anger. Anger is, after all, not only a result of sin but also a common cause of sin. Here is what the Bible has to say:

It is good to be slow to anger. Those who are quick to anger display a lack of wisdom.

Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly. (Proverbs 14:29)

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. (James 1:19)

Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools. (Ecclesiastes 7:9)

Anger should be addressed as soon as possible because it can easily turn to sin.

The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” (Genesis 4:6-7)

You have heard that it was said to those of old, “You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.” But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment …. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:21-24)

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger. (Ephesians 4:26)

Though at times anger can be righteous (see especially Mark 3:5 where Jesus becomes angry), anger is generally to be avoided.

For I fear that perhaps when I come I may find you not as I wish, and that you may find me not as you wish—that perhaps there may be quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder. (2 Corinthians 12:20)

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:19-21)

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. (Ephesians 4:31)

But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. (Colossians 3:8)

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. (James 1:19-20)

 

 

Praying, ‘Lord, Teach Me to Pray’

It’s hard to imagine anyone cruising the Christian blogosphere and not discovering  Canada’s Tim Challies. While his blog is among the top five Christian destinations available, many people assume it to be mostly links to other writers and breaking news stories, when in fact, he includes a good number of original pieces each week.  We’ve linked to him once before here, back in August 2011, but I thought you might want to take some extra time to meditate on this piece, which he titled Seven Ways to Pray for Your Prayer Life.

Here are seven ways that you can pray about your prayer life. These are seven items you can add to your prayer list as you consider your own prayer life or another person’s.

1) Pray that your prayers would be the expressions of a humble heart.

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:5-6)

2) Pray that God would remind you that he doesn’t want or need your eloquent prayers.

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:7-8)

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. (Romans 8:26)

3) Pray that you would remember what the really important requests are.

Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.”
(Matthew 6:9-13)

4) Pray that you would remember biblical examples of answered prayer.

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. … Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. (James 5:13-14, 17-18)

5) Pray that God would give you confidence in his sovereign power.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)

6) Pray that God would help you to persevere in your praying.

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.” (Luke 18:1-8)

7) Pray that God would encourage you that he is your loving Father and will give you only what is good.

Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9-11)

~Tim Challies

The Impossibility of Doing Holiness on Our Own Strength

Tim Challies is one of the few Canadian writers whose blog consistently turns up in the annual Top 100 Christian blog list, if not the Top 10.  He writes on a very wide variety of topics from a Reformed perspective, but nested in last week’s pieces was this short devotional which gives us a new analogy to use when trying to explain how we can never match God’s standard of holiness.  He simply called this piece 99.99%.

Canada’s Bank of Nova Scotia has to be one of the few banks in the world that allows you to order gold bullion online. Visit their web site, punch in your order along with your credit card information, and a couple days later FedEx will deliver your gold to the door, all sealed up in a plain and boring little envelope.

The gold comes in tiny little bars. For somewhere around $1700 (and rising fast!) you can purchase a 1 ounce gold bar and have it delivered to your home. It will be 22mm wide, 38mm high and 2.3mm thick. What you do with it once you buy it is a bit trickier—maybe you will want to put it in a safe deposit box or bury it out in the backyard.

That 1 ounce gold bar is 24 karat gold, 99.99% pure. Think about that for a moment. If it is 99.99% pure, it means that in order to divide out the impurities, you would need to divide it into 10,000 equal pieces before you found the one that was not gold. If the total surface area of that gold bar is 836mm, the impure part would come to less than one tenth of one millimeter. That would be smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. Do the calculation by weight and you’d find that it comes out to less than 3 milligrams.

A little while ago my son was asking me about holiness, about what it means to be a sinner. He was having trouble distinguishing between what it means to do bad things to other people and what it means to be a sinner. He is only a young kid, not old enough to have experienced any significant trouble. He has never murdered, he has never stolen, he has never cursed the name of God. He may have done some bad things in his life, but honestly, he’s a pretty good kid. Isn’t that good enough? If we were to divide his life into 10,000 little thoughts and actions, would we find that only one in 10,000 was impure?

The problem, of course, is that God is not 99.99% pure and neither does he allow us to be “only” that pure. God is perfect—not mostly perfect, not almost entirely perfect, but absolutely, fully, purely perfect. And he made us to be like him, to be holy as he is holy. He gave us the ability to live in that holiness, to live so that 10,000 out of 10,000 thoughts and deeds were unblemished in any way. 99.99% was never meant to be good enough. Though our first parents, acting on our behalf, saw fit to blemish that holiness, plunging us all into filth and defilement, the standard has removed unchanged. God demands and expects perfection. Any lack of perfection blemishes the entire person.

Ah, but here’s where we come to the heart of it. We cannot be perfect even though God demands perfection. And yet, out of his infinite grace, he has provided for us a substitute, one who was good on our behalf. He was good when he was born, free of the defilement of our parents; he was good as he walked the earth, free of the defilement of his own sin; he was good as he hung on the cross, even though there he became sin for us, taking on the full weight of our sin. And in the eyes of God, his sacrifice was good and sufficient. And now he offers to trade his holiness for our sin, if only we will trust in him.

It will be the answer to many, many prayers when my children look to this Savior, when they trade in their filth for his righteousness.

~Tim Challies

 

Powerful Worship Song: Speak, O Lord

Do you appreciate the worship songs posted here, or do you wish that every day was a text devotional or Bible study?  We’ve somewhat evolved a style here with something different in terms of mix or balance, and I think some days a great worship song can say as much or more than a great devotional post.

I saw this online at Tim Challies blog a few days ago, he had the making of the song with Kristyn Getty, Keith Getty and Stuart Townend.  I thought it would be great to share all three verses of the song.

Allow God to speak to you as you listen.

Speak, O Lord, as we come to You
To receive the food of Your Holy Word.
Take Your truth, plant it deep in us;
Shape and fashion us in Your likeness,
That the light of Christ might be seen today
In our acts of love and our deeds of faith.
Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us
All Your purposes for Your glory.

Teach us, Lord, full obedience,
Holy reverence, true humility;
Test our thoughts and our attitudes
In the radiance of Your purity.
Cause our faith to rise; cause our eyes to see
Your majestic love and authority.
Words of pow’r that can never fail—
Let their truth prevail over unbelief.

Speak, O Lord, and renew our minds;
Help us grasp the heights of Your plans for us—
Truths unchanged from the dawn of time
That will echo down through eternity.
And by grace we’ll stand on Your promises,
And by faith we’ll walk as You walk with us.
Speak, O Lord, till Your church is built
And the earth is filled with Your glory.

Hypocrites? No, Sinners By Design

Saw this on Brian Kiley’s blog who got it from Tim Challies’ blog.  Brian explains, “I came across this quote from R.C. Sproul who answers the charge that Christians a bunch of hypocrites who call out sins in others while continuing the sin themselves. As Sproul rightly demonstrates, nothing could be further from the truth.”

What happens is that people observe church members sinning. They reason within themselves, “That person professes to be a Christian. Christians aren’t supposed to sin. That person is sinning; therefore, he is a hypocrite.” The unspoken assumption is that a Christian is one who claims he does not sin. It reality just the opposite is the case. For a Christian to be a Christian, he must first be a sinner. Being a sinner is a prerequisite for being a church member.

The Christian church is one of the few organizations in the world that requires a public acknowledgment of sin as a condition for membership. In one sense the church has fewer hypocrites than any institution because by definition the church is a haven for sinners. If the church claimed to be an organization of perfect people then her claim would be hypocritical. But no such claim is made by the church. There is no slander in the charge that the church is full of sinners. Such a statement would only compliment the church for fulfilling her divinely appointed task.