Halfway (Again)

Well, I'm going to try and update more often, if for no other reason than to remember what I'm thinking now. Blogging is painful. I don't process information in the same way a blog post requires me to. Bah.

This post comes out of a great class morning prayer and a great day in general. (future Peter: class night 1st sem junior year, "class mp the day after class mp") My back hurts right now though.

This is a mid-semester recap. Something I've been trying to do this semester is go to morning prayer every day (!) and, in general, execute more discipline spiritually. This includes actually being diligent about what/how/for whom I'm praying, actually being deliberate about what I read in Scripture rather than "Why yes, I have in fact read my Bible today" and fighting the immature, selfish desires deeply rooted in my nature. Well, I'm trying. Why?

I want more joy. I just deleted my little side blurb on this blog because it was macabre and bleak. I take myself too seriously too often, and I worry too much about things I have no control over.

My prayer requests going into CFC Revival a couple weekends ago were this: "More joy, more discipline. More love. But also a realization that the notion that I can control my own spiritual welfare through enacting a certain level of discipline is the same notion that I can control my sin and my salvation. Both of these notions are wrong." I've realized that when I slip into selfishness (which often includes self-loathing) and temptation spiritually aren't really when I lose discipline (even though that's evidence of it) but instead when I begin to think "I'm a pretty good Christian" or, alternatively, "I'm a pretty bad Christian but I've got it under control, for the most part". God has taught me that I own nothing. I am totally and completely powerless. Even when I feel convicted with His Word or blessed with His presence, it isn't mine - it's all a gift, it's all grace. And so I realized that while I am ready to accept that I need Christ in many, many areas of my life: personal relationships, discipline, etc.; I also realized that I don't think I need Christ in other areas - doctrinal soundness, intellectual life, etc. But I do! And this, in fact, also is grace - the fact that nothing I do on my own will ever satisfy God, that is. It makes Christ's grace appear all the more magnificent. (2 Cor 12:9)

70 Years for Babylon

I realize now that what drives me to hang on to those little things is a deep-seated fear of...well, everything, really. I am afraid I will never change. I am afraid that there is no God. I am afraid that I will never achieve what I want to. I am afraid of rejection. I am deeply, deeply afraid of not knowing. I am afraid of many things; but mostly, I am afraid of myself.

Steve updated his status with this the other day. It's the halfway-again application - because it should always be the application. "In hindsight, the regret is always that you gave too little, never that you gave too much." More than anything else, I am afraid of myself - I am afraid of regret. But I don't ever want to look back on this time in 10 years and wish I had been more faithful. I don't ever want that, ever, ever, ever. But there's a problem: the dilemma here becomes again how to be driven by God's grace, and not human fear.

The New Covenant

But God's grace and mercy is brand spanking new every single second, of every single minute, of every single hour of every single day! It is extraordinarily counterintuitive to seek God in prayer right after I've sinned in some grand or exorbitant way. That counter-intuitiveness, really, is a fear of grace (http://theresurgence.com/2010/10/17/dont-create-a-new-law-for-yourself). How can I be afraid of grace when the Spirit lives in me?

'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus

Jesus! Jesus! How I trust HIM!

How I've proved him o'er and o'er!

Jesus, Jesus! Precious Jesus!

O, for faith to trust him more!

I want more joy. I want to be driven by grace. I want to be driven by the gospel. I want to be driven by the knowledge that I am loved more than I can ever comprehend. And I want to be driven by the knowledge that Christ is vast, Christ is great, and Christ is sovereign (Piper: the consummation of history is the adoration of Christ! (Isa 43:6-7)) I am once more thankful that His grace is sufficient for me. It is sufficient for my fears, too. I am thankful that these light and momentary troubles are preparing for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs everything I know! And I am thankful (but oh, how I wish I recognized it more often!) that Christ is worth every atom of every ounce of everything I am or will do. I am thankful most of all that He is fairer still today, still fairer tomorrow than today, and thankful that he will only ever increase in beauty and glory until one day, we see him unveiled, face-to-face. Radiance!

"seeing the worthiness of God and the worthlessness of everything else in comparison"

DA Carson on What the Centre of the Gospel Is

"The heart of the gospel is what God has done in Jesus, supremely in his death and resurrection. Period. It is not personal testimony about our repentance; it is not a few words about our faith response; it is not obedience; it is not the cultural mandate or any other mandate. Repentance, faith, and obedience are of course essential, and must be rightly related in the light of Scripture, but they are not the good news. The gospel is the good news about what God has done. Because of what God has done in Christ Jesus, the gospel necessarily includes the good that has been secured by Christ and his cross work. "

Too often I have the notion that coming back to the cross is something made of repentance first and foremost - repent, repent, repent, repent, obey, obey, obey, and I'll be back by the green pastures and still waters of humble obedience and faith to God. But that's not true - this makes my faith humanly driven, it makes my salvation and God's repeated and continued faithfulness and graciousness something that's driven by myself, rather than Him. To focus on the incorrect notion that the gospel requires repentance is to belittle the sacrifice of Christ. Repentance doesn't drive the gospel, because human actions don't drive the gospel. God does.

I hope I can remember this.

EDIT: of course, functionally speaking, it's impossible to be saved without repentance. What I aim to say instead is that it's only the first step. God does the rest.

Glory be

to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning; is now;
and forevermore shall be.
Amen.

:)

Some thoughts

This comes out of a blog post someone else made that I've had some time to think about.

I think that as Christians living in a postmodern age it's very hard to think that our spiritual life isn't about us. And I think it's the engenderment of that kind of thinking that bothers me most about how I see people approach their Christian lives nowaday. The following comes straight from the aforementioned blog (Stephen Hopkins'):

"Personal Christianity. God created you for a relationship. God loves you so much that He would have died just for you. We need to work out our own salvations. All that matters is your belief that you are saved.

While all of the above do look Christian (and many are – we are released from sin upon individual conversion and we are to work out our own salvations with fear and trembling), one has to look at the subjects of these statements. Namely, the word ‘you’ and its conjugations. It’s all about you.

What follows is ‘experiential’ Christianity. What we, ourselves have experienced in times of prayer and in our daily lives no longer supplements our faith; our personal experiences now trump everything else upon which our faith is based. Nearly gone is “God is real” and enter “God is real to me.” We are more fired up when someone talks about miracles and victories within their lives (or our lifetime) than the word of God. Jesus, Himself, said that if one had ignored the prophets, then even someone coming back from the dead wouldn’t convince another of the reality of God.
[...]
The last consequence I will discuss today of such a personal Christianity is the embracing of the self. Although it is often guised as self-improvement or self discovery, there exists a pervading idea that growing closer to God is the same as self-actualization. Empowerment by God no longer means being indwelt by the Holy Spirit, but that God gives you the focus to more efficiently organize your own energy and talents. Knowing yourself is now a prerequisite to knowing God, and loving yourself a precursor to loving others."

http://hoppy393.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/children-of-modernity/

There is very little that he hasn't said that I can't say or screw up with my lesser level of verbal eloquence. But it is an important thing to ponder. The last couple weeks or so I've had one extremely important question on my mind: Does God want you to be happy?

My first approach to that question treated it as some kind of prosperity gospel - even if God doesn't want you to be materially successful, to think that His highest priority is wanting to grant you some kind of emotional stability is just as much of a prosperity gospel as any materially-minded one might be. So I preliminarily answered that as "No, God doesn't necessarily want you to be happy."

But now that I've had some extra time to think about it, it seems that it absolutely is the case - in a certain sense - that God does want us to be happy. But it's not about personal fulfillment or some flawed sense of "I want to grow in God so I can be emotionally secure", but it's very much true in the sense that we were created for God's glory, and moreover to enjoy the fullness of His glory.

"God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him" keeps popping up in new and interesting places.

Procrastination...

...is really annoying.

So is taking a nap for 2.5 hours when you only meant to nap for 40 minutes.

A Great High Priest

Boy, temptation sure is rough. But the victory has been won. Pray God that I might never forget that fact. There's a quote somewhere by John Piper that runs along the lines of, "We should be glad our hope in salvation lies not in our deeds or faith, but in God's unwavering pursuit to magnify His glory." By no means is it verbatim, but the point is made clear.

My heart/head (because the two are so oft indistinguishable, for me) is now telling me: Persevere, not to resist sin and not so that I can feel good about myself; but persevere so that God might be glorified through it. And goodness gracious is it difficult.

Another wise man once said:

"No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness - they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means - the only complete realist." - C.S. Lewis

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Hebrews 4:15

Regret Not

This past week has been really tough. It's the first section of time in recent memory where I am honestly not doing spiritually well - and I guess that in itself is something to praise God for; that at least as far as I can tell, I generally feel at least content in my relationship with Him. But this is the first time in a long time that I can legitimately say I'm not doing well spiritually. I'm sure future-Peter might not remember exactly what I'm going through now, simply because I'm not entirely sure myself. It feels like it came out of nowhere - after a great CFC Revival weekend, a Sunday special praise and another coming up this weekend, I'm almost surprised I'm feeling this way. But nevertheless it is the case.

So being entirely unsure why I'm feeling this way - and thereby also a little confused as to how exactly I actually am feeling, I'm also entirely sure how to write about it. But I guess I'll just go down the list. The one sensation that keeps coming back to me, like a song that's stuck in your head that you can't get out, is regret.

Regret: what an ugly word. What an ugly emotion. Yet what a human condition it truly is. There are things I've done that I'm far less than proud of, and there are people I've mistreated in ways I would die for to be able to go back and remedy. I still have those struggles - I think. I can't exactly compare the present to the past. But the past is still there: and so I regret. But the past is still there: so regret is untouchable. So since I don't know - since humanity doesn't know - how to attack it, to remove it from its lofty, sneering seat, I am content to let it run its course in my mind and spirit. Regret plays a scorched earth wargame that I am too scared to win: because I'm sure now, on some level, I don't want to win.

But regret is not repentance. Regret is selfish in the highest sense. Not that sorrow or want for recompense is selfish, but in the sense that - at least for me - regret makes me play God. Regret says, "You could have done better. You could have done different." And so, I selfishly think that 'next time', I will do better. I will do different. And I will do good. Regret makes me see my past in a way as to plan to control my future with an iron fist - in only a way that I want to. If I can fix everything, nothing can ever go wrong. And if I can make it so nothing ever goes wrong, then I'll be God. And then I'll never have to die. And yet, I don't have even the slightest control over even the slightest parts of my life or myself. Regret never ends.

Repentance is in the same way selfless in the highest sense. Not that in view of my sin I suddenly give myself to the poor and needy, but in the sense that repentance requires nothing but humility. Repentance says, "You did not do better. You did not do different. But turn to God, and He will." I've been told on multiple occassions that repentance means literally 'to turn'. Yet how can I do that, knowing now that I have in the past (and will likely continue to) turn to the wrong things, and altogether fail to 'turn' at all? It seems clear to me that that's a bad question. It's not up to me whether or not I want to or I should repent, but it's wholly in view of God's infinite glory that repentance is absolutely necessary, that it's in fact the only option. If repentance only comes halfway, it turns into regret. But repentance in its completeness is knowing that I will never be able to do it on my own. Repentance in its completeness is knowing that without God, I will lose that scorched-earth game. Repentance is knowing that God never ends.

And if that's not a 'new song' of praise, I don't know what is.

"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Isaiah 1:18