An Unhealthy Focus on Weakness

My son is a pretty decent baseball player…for a five year old.

He’d rather me not have added those last five words. He wants to be, at the age of five, a better baseball player than the guys that he watches on television with his daddy*. But he’s not. And this makes him really angry and sometimes even makes him want to give up altogether.

When he falls to the ground and cries because he strikes out I want to pick him up and say, “Dude, you’re five. Suck it up, you’re gonna strike out.”

I think the Lord says something similar to me at times. “Dude, you’ve been plucked out of the fire. What did you expect? Suck it up, you’re going to blow it in your discipleship. You aren’t Jesus, you’re going to blow it at times in your ministry. Get over it!”

When I assume that I should have arrived by now, my pride is exposed. John Newton explains well:

Why then should you complain that you are not so tall, nor your branches so wide, nor your root so deep, in two years’ growth, as others who have been growing twenty or thirty years?…Do not let Satan impose a false humility upon you. Depend upon it there is more of self and self-righteousness in these complaints, than we are usually aware of. It is better to be thankful for what you have received than impatient because you have no more. If you can make yourself better, do it by all means; but if you cannot, wait simply the Lord’s time, at the Lord’s feet. If you heart is upright, you have only to attend to the means and precepts of grace.

An unhealthy focus on our depravity and weaknesses is unhealthy. Satan is more than happy to have us licking our wounds if it distracts us from finding true redemption and healing in Jesus. That is what Newton is saying here. Our duty is to run to Christ and be diligently engaged in the disciplines which put us in the path of grace. Whining about our lack of grace in an area does very little to help us.

Newton went on to say, “one look at the brazen serpent will do more than a month of looking at our own wounds”. Being focused on our rebellion, remaining sin, inadequacies, and personal brokenness is to foolishly stare at the conquered serpent instead of rejoicing in the conquering work of the One that represents the brazen serpent.

Diligently pursue Christ and be content with where he has you.

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*Granted, since we watch the Kansas City Royals the bar is much lower and he is actually quite close to the talent level of some.

Today in Blogworld 05.10.13

A Note from Crossway President

If you are able in any way…help these guys out. Crossway is a great company that needs our help.

Shaping a Child’s Soul

Timothy Paul Jones shares why the task of shaping a child’s soul is way to important to hand over to professionals.

Journalist Covering Gosnell Becomes Pro-Life

What an amazing story! May we hear more stories like this one.

Dallas Willard: Radian Life, Radiant Death

Dallas Willard, author of the Divine Conspiracy and other books, died a couple days ago. Tom Nelson reflects on his life and death.

This is all kinds of awesome and I’m not sure why:

How to Defend Your Faith Against Secularism

I’ve got a handful of young men that I have the opportunity to disciple. They are on the frontlines in their school. Every day they are sandwiched between cultural Catholicism and the godless presuppositions of secularism. I’m grateful that the Lord is working in the hearts of these young men. Recently they came to my office and asked if I could help them defend their faith.

How I’m going about doing this might seem counterintuitive. My philosophy comes from Charles Spurgeon:

“Defend the Bible? Would you defend a lion? Loose him; and let him go!”…The way to meet infidelity is to spread the Bible. The answer to every objection against the Bible is the Bible.

Rather than focusing on a host of current issues and answers to tough questions my goal will be to teach these students the Scriptures. I want unleash the lion. If these young men are captivated by the God of the Bible then I don’t need to worry about sticky questions destroying their faith.

Furthermore, if the Scriptures really are the means that God uses to bring about conversion I can have confidence that these young men will be used by God to influence their fellow students. They don’t need to enter into endless arguments that are really no more than a smoke screen for the true issue of human rebellion. I want them to know that the chief problem for scoffers isn’t an intellectual problem but a moral one.

Sure we’ll address issues like evolution, human sexuality, and everything else. But these will not happen with the Bible on defense. This will happen with the Bible on offense—unleashed to shake up our lives and draw us to King Jesus. Then humble young men, captivated by Jesus, will be equipped to share the risen Christ in the face of aggressive secularism.

Friends, we don’t need to spend an inordinate amount of time defending the Bible. Let’s simply have the Scriptures do it’s work in our own hearts and keep digging until the Lord rips to shreds every last remnant of sin and unbelief. And while the Lord is doing this let us humbly engage a culture with the unleashed Lion of the Tribe of Judah that is powerful enough to draw any man or woman to Himself no matter how obstinate.

Seeking God's Vindication

There are some passages of Scripture that certainly go against the grain of our 21st century sensibilities.  Some of the psalms certainly fall into that category. When the psalmist cries out to God for vindication, for vengeance, for the Lord to come down hard on “my enemies” there is an awkward, uneasy silence in the sanctuary.  Those words sound so harsh, so self-serving, so un-graceful to us in ways that cause us to step back.  Unfortunately, some believers read these psalms and instead of stepping back to consider what God is truly saying to us, they step away without learning from the Lord.  They choose to ignore the psalm or to twist and turn it around in such a manner as to interpret it as something less than what it is.

Psalm 7 begins with a confession that God is our refuge while seeking safety and and then calls on God for vindication.  Psalm 7:3-5: “O lord my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust.”

David has a deep of understanding of who he is as a sinful man.  In his imperfection he knows his all-too-human tendency to see and feel the sins of others while possessing a blindness and insensitivity to his own sin, especially the sin against others.  David has the courage to ask God to ‘lay him low,’ to cause him to face his own sin.   For any child of God, this knowledge from God should lead to confession, repentance, and a fresh cleansing from the Lord.  David understands that we must look in the mirror of God’s Word before we address God’s work in dealing with the sins of others.  This a courageous act on his part.  Asking God to do whatever it takes in our lives for us to see and deal rightly with our sin is a dangerous thing.  God will hear this prayer, examine our hearts to see how sincere our prayer is, and get to work. While the end result is a fresh experience of God’s result, His work leading to that end will be painful.

You can see how God answered this prayer later in David’s life.  Read again the story of David, Bathsheeba, and Nathan the prophet (2 Samuel 11-12).  Read David’s confession in Psalm 51 in conjunction with what he seeks from God in Psalm 7.

When someone attacks, harms, and hurts us, may we have courage to ask God to open our eyes to our own lives and sin.  May we have the courage to ask God to do whatever it takes for us to understand not only our sin, but his grace and mercy.  May we only begin to pray in regard to our enemies after God has shown us our own lives.  Then and then only will we truly pray from a position of humility.  We may still pray for God’s righteousness and vengeance, but we will do so from a position of respect for God’s wisdom and His complete understanding of the circumstances and what must occur for “His will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”

Today in Blogworld 05.09.13

The 9 Words You Missed

Jon Acuff talks about the “comma of grace” and a few words that we might have missed in a narrative about Peter’s denial of Christ.

On Mother’s Day, Remember the Infertile

Great reminder from Russell Moore

9 Things You Should Know About Pornography and the Brain

If you think you can just look at a little porn and it not have an effect you are fooled. Here are 9 things you need to know about your brain on porn.

The Boundaries of Evangelicalism

Tim Challies, with a little help from Don Whitney, looks at mysticism as it relates to evangelicalism. Sadly the former has slipped into the latter.

This little dude didn’t want to go to church…but he’s a pretty good driver: