Grace and The Sovereignty of God - Part IV

Thinking. Thinking. Thinking about God's grace and sovereignty.

This is an infinite topic because He is an infinite God. This is a finite blog series because I am a finite mind. But I am still not sure how long it will go on for.

But my thoughts now are on what I need to do as I live my life daily. How do I go about honoring Him and living it out in a life that has Christ as the central core? How do I make sure I am living the best I can to be pleasing to Him?

• Patience - I need to live a life that recognizes His sovereignty and waits for His timing. I need to sit and listen to Him and make His will my timing, not the other way around.
• Prudence - I need to live a life that is active in discerning and doing His will. I cannot sit back and wait for the Lord to drive me where He wants me to go, I need to follow hard after Him and go where He is directing me.

How do I balance the two? I am convinced that only through prayer can the discernment come to know when to wait and when to walk. If I am not listening for His voice, how can I expect to hear it? If I am not seeking Him in my life, how can I expect to see Him working in it?

Someone once told me the Lord does not steer a parked car. How true. I just hope I am wise enough to know to wait at times for the light to turn green.

Grace and The Sovereignty of God - Part III

Further thoughts regarding God's grace and sovereignty. One of the things I often hear is how can a loving God permit pain and suffering in the world.

I do not know all or necessarily any of the answer to that question, but here is how my recent thinking made me work through it (for now).

A loving God wants us to fully realize the joy that a close personal relationship with Him would bring, fueled by our faith and trust in Jesus and our desire to be obedient to the will of God that comes through that faith and trust. A loving God also allows us the freedom to make our own choices. I cannot fully reconcile God's sovereignty with the concept of personal accountability, but I do know we will stand in judgment one day (Hebrews 9:27), the results of which will depend whether we have trusted Christ or not. Lots more can be said about that. Lots more.

But moving on, I see pain and suffering in a fallen world being used to address two things:

• Pride - as sinful beings in a fallen world, we do need to deal with our pride and how it can drive us away from God, away from His will, away from the joyous union with Him.
• Dependence - as sinful beings in a fallen world, we need to come to terms that only dependence on Him will get us through to eternal salvation and security.

Pride cuts against dependence on God and drives us from it. maybe pain and suffering are actually a loving way to draw us to Him. 

It may sound cruel, but the temporary pain of a temporal life (even though it does not feel temporary when it is occurring) may be a loving way to draw us to the eternal joy of union woth God. 

We are after all sinful beings in need of saving from ourselves.

Grace and The Sovereignty of God - Part II

A good thing is happening here. I have been thinking a lot about grace, a lot about the sovereignty of God. I have written a little about my thoughts and that is making me think about it all the more. A good thing.

As I explore it a bit more two other thoughts begin to bubble up to the surface: acceptance and condemnation.

• With God's grace and sovereignty, you can accept people as they are.  Not necessarily accept what they are saying or doing, for that may be against God';s will. But accept them as people, and as a result, love them more as people. Not for what they do or say, but who they are. People, lost without a loving God unless they accept Christ as Savior, lost and unacceptable to all. That is, unacceptable without God's grace manifested in the atoning, substitutionary death of Jesus and His resurrection from the dead in victory over all.
• With God's grace and sovereignty, there is no need to condemn anyone.  When you realize your own unacceptability but for His grace, you realize there is no one you should be condemning, as you are no better than they. When you accept the fullness of His sovereignty, you realize there is no need to do so, because He is in control and will square all things in His timing.

Faith and trust in Jesus as the sole way to your eternal salvation was the starting point of my journey into God's grace and sovereignty. Such a rich journey, such a long way more to go.

Grace and The Sovereignty of God

I have been doing more thinking than writing lately, a condition that is probably better for me in the long run. What I have spent a good deal of time thinking about is grace and God's sovereignty.

I have come to some preliminary conclusions. I say preliminary because of well what the conclusions are:

• My study of grace and God's sovereignty is a life-long process: Now you see why my conclusions are preliminary, I do not believe you ever fully plumb the depths of either topic. The more I study, the more I meditate, the more I learn. And the farther I find I have to go.
• I tend to try to limit God's sovereignty: At least I usually do. The more I worry about my little world or expand that worry to what is going on in the world, I am actually limiting the sovereignty of the Lord. He is in control, I usually do not have a clue as to what He is up to until after He has accomplished His purposes.
• I need to keep the His grace and my living the Christian life separate: While I need to accept what He has willed, and do so with at least a minuscule measure of the grace Christ exhibited on earth, and the Father lavished on us from heaven; I do need to try to achieve all I am capable of in living in a Christ-like way. I should not accept what happens in the world without trying to do my part to influence and change it, but I cannot take the burden for righting all the world's problem. It is probably better if I just try to discern what role He has for me in my small corner of things.

So acceptance of His grace and sovereignty comes down to three things: faith, trust and obedience. Faith in God's character, trust that Christ is my salvation and obedience to His will. 

And I need to keep thinking about all of this daily.

Be Careful

As I read through Numbers 28, the laws for offerings laid down by the Lord for the nation of Israel, I am most struck by a warning He gives at the very beginning of that chapter. 

You shall be careful to present my offering...

Through Jesus we now can approach the throne of grace in gladness, and boldly, for we are His children, redeemed by the sacrifice of our Savior. We have access any time, for any matter.

But I know that I, like many, probably take that for granted much of the time.

Yes, we have unlimited access. Yes, He is concerned about all that concerns us. Yes. He loves us and wants us to approach Him.

But do we always do it with the reverence and awe, with the praise and thankfulness that we should?

I cannot say that I do, after all I am a sinful being in a fallen world; it took the death of His Son for me to be able to come before Him, acceptable in His sight.

Yes, I want to come before my Father continuously, for both praise and worship, to ask for wisdom and mercy.

But let me never take it for granted.

For where would I be if He took me for granted?

Renewal

I was prompted, convicted or just made to get off my duff and blog about renewal today. Kudos to PeterPollock.com for putting this on the table today.
Renewal.
I think about what it takes for me in the spiritual sense. A willingness on my part to pursue it. A willingness on the Lord’s part to offer it freely and continuously to me. In fact, renewal makes me think of another word.
Patience.
His, not mine. For His offer stands 24/7, while my desire and drive to pursue it wanes daily. It makes me think of another word.
Persistence.
His again, not mine. He is willing to keep after me and bring me into the fold. He will not give up on me now that He has made me His. Which brings up one more word.
Grace.
All His. He would do this all for me even after he knows who I really am.
So renewal really has little to do with me, and is all about Him. It has to be that way or it really isn’t going to work in my life.

The Glory of God

I stayed up late last night to watch the lunar eclipse, knowing I would pay for it this morning when I had to get up for work. I figured watching a lunar eclipse on the winter solstice, which hasn't happened since 1638 (I missed that one) and will not happen until 2094 (will probably miss that one too, or since I will be around 138, probably will have even more trouble than staying up than tonight), it was worth the effort and the pain. Seeing something that hasn't happened in close to 400 years is something to see, and to write  about. Just to walk outside and see the moon directly overhead, like the noonday sun, was a treat worth staying up for. And it got better from there.

I really wanted to experience the glory of God in the wee hours of the morn, watching what I could see of how He wheels the heavens about from our vantage point on earth, bringing about moments of celestial harmony such as this. These moments are rare indeed in our rather puny and finite lives. These moments cannot be created by us, but only by the Creator for us.

It made me think of the of the divine harmony one can experience for eternity by accepting Jesus as the only way to your salvation. Of being able to experience incredible moments of harmony eternally, continually and absolutely.

A moment like this really highlights the incredible grace He extends to us daily, once we are His.

A New Direction?

I know it has been a while since I blogged and may be quite a while longer before I do it again. You may have noticed I changed the name of the blog and the link to it. You may not have noticed since I am not sure I am not going to mess up all the links it has. It may take me some time to sort that all out, but I have always plunged first and thought about it afterwards as I have worked changes to this blog.
I am looking to make this more of a passage through the grace I have been provided by Christ through my trust in Him, as I walk in faith with Him. We shall see how it goes and if anyone actually can read this going forward. As a social mediot, I do not always get the techie stuff quite right.

Happy touring!

It's So Easy

The heart of salvation is the Cross of Christ. The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is that it cost God so much. The Cross was the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: April 6 Devotional

The ease to which our salvation can come to us is often the hardest thing to grasp. We borne nothing at the Cross and gained everything. It may be hard in our pride to accept the fact that we are insignificant in our own salvation, the hard work was done without us even being a part of it. How much more a salve to pride to think we accomplished it through great struggle and significant accomplishment on our part. Our salvation is not accomplished through our great struggle but despite our great sin.

That we grasp what is so freely offered, and so painfully won to hand over to us in an incredible ease. Grace pours out of the heart of God,, the heart that absorbed the pain of our sin and freed us from it.

The collision occurred, but we get to walk away from that crash, unscathed and saved. We get to come off of His mountain because He climbed it for us.




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The Nature of Sin

We have to recognize that sin is a fact of life, not just a shortcoming. Sin is blatant mutiny against God, and either sin or God must die in my life. The New Testament brings us right down to this one issue— if sin rules in me, God’s life in me will be killed; if God rules in me, sin in me will be killed. There is nothing more fundamental than that. The culmination of sin was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and what was true in the history of God on earth will also be true in your history and in mine— that is, sin will kill the life of God in us. We must mentally bring ourselves to terms with this fact of sin. It is the only explanation why Jesus Christ came to earth, and it is the explanation of the grief and sorrow of life.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: June 23 Devotional

Sin is mutinous, sin kills, sin is a fact of life. Pretty dismal if that was all there was, if that was all we had to work with. If there was only our sinful selves, each and every one of us.

²³for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Romans 3:23 (NASB)

But we cannot give up for there is a hope we all have in our Savior.

¹Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, ²fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:1-2 (NASB)

We can mess things up on our own, we have proven that since the beginning, but we cannot make right what has gone astray. Not alone. Not without help.

But by the Lord's grace we have it.

Pride and Patience

It is much easier to do something than to trust in God; we see the activity and mistake panic for inspiration. That is why we see so few fellow workers with God, yet so many people working for God. We would much rather work for God than believe in Him. Do I really believe that God will do in me what I cannot do?...When God wants to show you what human nature is like separated from Himself, He shows it to you in yourself. If the Spirit of God has ever given you a vision of what you are apart from the grace of God (and He will only do this when His Spirit is at work in you), then you know that in reality there is no criminal half as bad as you yourself could be without His grace.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: June 1 Devotional

This guy really does not pull any punches. I love it. Chambers is getting at the heart of our pride and arrogance here. We really think at times if we cannot accomplish something by ourselves, then God could not accomplish it in us. We have to doing and achieving, not waiting in faith and trust.

I am most guilty of this. I am not by nature patient. I feel I need to take the lead, to do it, and then try to make it seem like it was God's will after the fact. I wonder how many times I pray to the Lord but leave the room before He starts to speak so that I never hear what He has to say to me. I wonder, but I know it is a lot.

How convicting to stand in front of the mirror and be shown by God how lost I would be without His grace. Lost in my pride. Lost without my patience to wait on His timing.

How fortunate that He has the patience I lack.

Be Not An Example To Others

There is another kind of "fear and trembling" [Phil. 2:12], one that, so far from diminishing the assurance of faith, the more firmly establishes it. This happens when believers, considering that the examples of divine wrath executed upon the ungodly as warnings to them, take special care not to provoke God's wrath against them by the same offenses; or, when inwardly contemplating their own misery, learn to depend wholly upon the Lord, without whom they see themselves more unstable and fleeting than any wind.
John Calvin - The Institutes of The Christian Religion 3.2.22

This is one example you do not want to be. And it is the easiest for any of us to be. Not the good, the bad and the ugly. The before picture. The sinner. The proud and self sufficient. If God chose any of us to be an example of divine wrath, would we have a shred of a basis to complain?

No.

Because we are all that He calls us in that circumstance. That there are not more examples of divine wrath and less of divine mercy is only due to one thing.

Divine grace.

We could, I could, easily be this example. Oh, that a merciful Lord and Savior does not require that, but takes it on Himself.

There are many examples to be in life, let's all try harder not to be this one.

Contentment

I have started reading again from my personal pile instead of seminary pile. It is a nice switch. I am reading The Practice of Godliness by Jerry Bridges, a book I have picked up several times and am now thoroughly enjoying.

Just read the chapter on contentment and it really made me think. We have a hard time being content, no matter how hard we pursue the Lord. Bridges talks about contentment with position, possessions or power. About contentment with the providence of God. The point he makes is that the word rendered content or contentment in the Bible has the meaning sufficiency. That is the key to contentment from Bridges perspective as he draws on 2 Corinthians 12, specifically God's response in verse 9 to Paul's pleading to remove the thorn in his flesh:

⁹And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness " Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

God's grace is sufficient. If we accept that, our place in this life will render us contentment no matter the circumstances. So it seems to me that when I struggle with being content with where the Lord has placed me, it is an issue of trust and faith in His grace.

Once again, it is me, not Him. As usual, as always, in all ways.

That does not surprise me, but it is not easy to bear things at times even if I reflect on that.

It is a good thing God's grace is sufficient, for it is sufficient in my times of impatience, selfishness or mistrust in his will.

Happy Easter!

A brief post, for today is a day of prayer, praise and worship, not blogging.

He is Risen, He is Risen indeed!

Nothing is as victorious as the Lamb, nothing is as merciful in victory, nothing is as gracious in mercy.

A Happy and Blessed Easter to all.

In God We Trust

Then David said to Gad, "I am in great distress. Let us now fall into the hand of the LORD for His mercies are great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man." 2 Samuel 24:14 (NASB)

King David was a wise man. Even in times of trouble,even if you feel God is angry with you, the best place to be is in God's hands. That comes from having faith in, from being able to trust a just, perfect, merciful, gracious and loving God.

Pretty sure there is nothing more I can or want to say about that.

The Intersection of Grace

When this topic was originally suggested to me to do as a guest post, I said to myself it was one I should have written about some time ago. I have been blogging for about nine months now and have not hit this topic hard. I am an evangelical Christian so I should have gotten around to this before now. I do not think it is going to be used, so I decided to post it myself, as I like the message. If it appears elsewhere, that is not so bad either.

As I started to think of grace, I thought of an intersection, a 4-way street. The north-south street is one's relationship to God; the east west thoroughfare the relationship to each other.

In the circles of faith where I spend my time, the thoughts of grace are usually centered on a gracious God who forgives us for sins if we place our faith in Christ. Forgiveness that is available to all if you just come to that faith. A forgiveness all need but none deserve, even those who have come to that faith and may think they are better people because of it. They are not better, just forgiven. That's the grace part. That's the part God does if you come to trust in the way He asks.

That's grace coming down to us; there is also a component of grace that should be going up the road as well. Grace to accept what He has put in your life, no matter if it is good or bad. Grace to accept a God ordained will and be thankful for the grace extended to you, no matter what. That's an element of grace even the most faithful will struggle with at times. Things will not always be great, not always be rosy. I do not believe that is what is promised in Scripture. You need to graciously accept the grace offered, in the manner offered. For there is a plan beyond your comprehension decided by an infinite mind you cannot possibly understand. You need to have the grace to accept that.

There is another road grace travels on, the east-west road running between people. If you have accepted the grace of God, you really need to extend a measure of grace to others. Accept them as flawed individuals, struggling with sin, with their own set of issues. Accept them for what they are, even as you try to help them be better. Accept them as you need them to accept you. The fact of the matter is that you are the same type of flawed, sinful person that they are. You are no better than them, even if you have been blessed by the grace of God. Chances are you are worse.

The fact that grace has been extended to you by God puts you in a difficult position. Not to extend it to others exposes you as an ingrate, someone who truly does not understand or appreciate what they have been given. Someone who misses in large measure what has been done to release them from a standard of behavior they cannot possibly meet on their own.

Granted grace is a dangerous possession. Because to whom much is given, much is expected in return.

Total Surrender

Yesterday I wrote about the true surrender a follower of Jesus should seek after, should strive for.

Today I want to mention another surrender that Chambers talks about:

In our surrender, we must give ourselves to God in the same way He gave Himself for us— totally, unconditionally, and without reservation.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest March 13 Devotional

Or to put it another way:

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
John 3:16 (NASB)

Yesterday's surrender was true if it came from the heart. Today's is total because it comes from the divine. If you were grumbling about yesterday's surrender, you should be convicted by today's.

Yesterday's is not necessary unless you want perfect fellowship with God. Do it, and all you get is more than salvation, you get to grow closer and closer to the Almighty.

Today's is not necessary unless He wants to be gracious and merciful. He does it, and all He gets is us.

Who do you think gets the better deal in surrendering? Do you even have to think about it?

Disobedience vs. Indifference

Which is worse, to actively disobey God, or to ignore Him? Which is more offensive, to scream in His face or to yawn at Him?

Both, in my opinion, are really, really bad. But hey, that's just me.

Following the way of Jesus, sticking on the narrow road of obedience to His teachings in this fallen world requires faith in Him, trust in His finished work, compliance with His commands. What else should you offer to the Lord of your life?

We know what He has given us, the gift he offered in grace and mercy. Yet off the path we go, time and time again. Yes, we come back (most of the times), yes we are sorry (and we usually mean it), but off we will go again. Acting like the spoiled children we are; acting like it is all about us, not Him. I know I do it more often than I care to admit, I know I keep coming back, only to go off the road into the ditch, again and again. I am thankful for a gracious, merciful, loving and patient God. I think this is a very good way to sum up our sin nature: knowing what He has done, knowing what it cost Him; we will freely choose to go off the road, knowing we can come back. Safe in our Father's hands, safe to act out and know He will forgive us. To me, that powerfully demonstrates our sin nature.

In my mind, it is one thing not to turn to a loving God, to ignore what all creation knows; it can be our decision to ignore the stones crying out as it were. It is another to turn away after the gift has been freely given and accepted. Somehow the second seems worse to me. Taking God for granted just seems worse than disobeying Him in the first place.

I think we are all indifferent to God at points in our life, due to His mercy, grace and patience, I think we all take Him for granted from time to time:

• So I ask you, how indifferent have you been lately?
  
• How does that indifference spill over in to how you lead your life?
  
• What are you going to do to get back on the road?
  

If you do not want to answer me, fine, but answer yourself.