Sacred Mundane: The Blog

Conversation yesterday brought this to mind…

Others May, You Cannot

If God has called you to be really like Jesus, He will draw you to a life of crucifixion and humility, and put upon you such demands of obedience, that you will not be able to follow other people, or measure yourself by other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other good people do things which He will not let you do.

Other Christians and ministers who seem very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires, and work schemes to carry out their plans, but you cannot do it; and if you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent.

Others may boast of themselves, of their work, of their success, of their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing, and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.

Others may be allowed to succeed in making money, or may have a legacy left to them, but it is likely God will keep you poor, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, namely, a helpless dependence on Him, that He may have the privilege of supplying your needs day by day out of an unseen treasury.

The Lord may let others be honored and put forward, and keep you hidden in obscurity, because He wants you to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade. He may let others be great, but keep you small.  He may let others do a work for Him and get the credit of it, but He will make you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious, He may let others get the credit for the work which you have done, and thus make your reward ten times greater when Jesus comes.

The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch over you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings, or for wasting your time, which other Christians never seem distressed over. So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has a right to do as He pleases with His own.

He may not explain to you a thousand things which puzzle your reason in His dealings with you. But if you absolutely sell yourself to be His…slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and bestow upon you many blessings which come only to those who are in the inner circle.

Settle it forever, then, that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes, in ways that He does not seem to use with others.  Now when you are so possessed with the living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of Heaven.

G.D. Watson, 1845-1924

{How today can you delight in God’s special guardianship over your life and the promise of fragrant fruit which can only be produced in the shade? Happy Monday and thank you, friends, for reading.}

Read Psalm 103 this week, received this “out of the blue” from a friend on the same day … Pray it can be a blessing to you too. May you sing a Song of Praise to our God today and every day. Bless your Sunday.

Forget Not His Benefits

It is a delightful and profitable occupation to mark the hand of God in the lives of ancient saints and to observe His goodness in delivering them, His mercy in pardoning them, and His faithfulness in keeping His covenant with them. But would it not be even more interesting and profitable for us to observe the hand of God in our own lives? Should we not look upon our own history as being at least as full of God, as full of His goodness and of His truth, as much a proof of His faithfulness and veracity as the lives of any of the saints who have gone before?

We do our Lord an injustice when we suppose that He performed all His mighty acts and showed Himself strong for those in the early time but does not perform wonders or lay bare His arm for the saints who are now upon the earth. Let us review our own lives. Surely in these we may discover some happy incidents, refreshing to ourselves and glorifying to our God. Have you had no deliverances? Have you passed through no rivers, supported by the divine presence? Have you walked through no fires unharmed? Have you had no manifestations? Have you had no choice favors? The God who gave Solomon the desire of his heart, has He never listened to you and answered your requests? That God of lavish bounty of whom David sang, “who satisfies you with good,”1 has He never filled you up to overflowing? Have you never been made to lie down in green pastures? Have you never been led by the still waters?

Surely the goodness of God has been the same to us as to the saints of old. Let us, then, weave His mercies into a song. Let us take the pure gold of thankfulness and the jewels of praise and make them into another crown for the head of Jesus. Let our souls produce music as sweet and as exhilarating as came from David’s harp while we praise the Lord whose mercy endures forever.

-Alistair Begg

My confession is that all this week I’ve struggled.

How do we have a heart for the lost yet rest our head at night and hope somehow to sleep? How do we glimpse at the reality of hell and still go to the store and buy our bananas, business as usual? How do I continue to live my affluent American life while hundreds of thousands of souls are dying without Christ?

It’s messing with me.

My whole life mantra has been the Sacred Mundane and yet how can this mundane really be right when unspeakable atrocities are taking place in our world? I read the prayer requests that flood into my inbox. Cancer, pain, death, sorrow.

Oh Lord Jesus. This world… I pray but the reality sweeps over me and settles and it just feels crushing. Heavy.

And in the midst of it I am still myself. This flesh flares up and I snap at my children and despise how I look and let trivialities steal my joy.

The weight of our world’s sorrow and my own sinfulness feels unbearable.

I tell myself it’s jet lag.

But really it’s deeper. And I don’t see it clear until I turn the final pages of Grudem’s abbreviated theology text. Of course, every practical problem is simply an outworking of errant theology.  We always act and feel according to what we believe. And who would have thought that the most comforting, encouraging thing in the world would be a chapter on Final Judgment?

Did you know that God is absolutely fair?

“The final judgment will take place so that God can display His glory to all mankind by demonstrating His justice and mercy simultaneously. The final judgment will be entirely fair. Each person, whether destined for eternal glory or eternal condemnation, will be dealt with more fairly at the final judgment than at any previous time…

The final judgment assures us that regardless of what happens God is in control and will eventually bring about a right end to every situation…” (131)

This is where freedom comes. This is where the yoke of Jesus becomes light. It is light because the responsibility to “sort things out” does not fall on our shoulders.

Ever.

Does that strike anyone else as gloriously freeing? If I am wronged, God sees it. If Christians are persecuted and even murdered for their faith, I should pray for them and support them, but I can also rest in knowing that God will deal with them fairly and bless them for their suffering. For those who are undergoing tremendous physical suffering I can pray for them and help wherever I can, but rest in knowing that God will someday wipe every tear from their eye and welcome them to glory where there is no pain and suffering.

Can I tell you how amazing this is? Finally there are happy tears in my eyes. The world’s weight belongs nowhere near our shoulders. How funny that we should ever think we are in any condition to bear it…

My prayer for you this weekend?

Rest for your souls. May you find it, resting in His fairness.

{Bless your weekend and thanks, as always, for reading.}