More convinced about grace

Recently, I read Jerry Bridges' book Transforming Grace. After writing my last blog entry, I am totally convinced that God, in His Providence, wanted me to read this book. Someone lent me it for me to see if it was suitable for a friend of mine! But the Lord wanted me to read it. And Bridges encapsulates far more succintly and articulately what I was trying to say in my last post here.

In the preface to the book the author says, "The grace of God is one of the most important subjects in all of Scripture. At the same time it is probably one of the least understood." He points out that most Christian literature on the subject deals with justification or the initial coming to faith by grace but that seems to be where it ends. In agreement with what I said in my previous post, he says "the Bible teaches that we are not only saved by grace, but we also live by grace every day of our lives."

Bridges also affirms my fears that so many of us think that whether God is going to bless us or not is based on our performance. He says that we think that "if we have performed well-whatever "well" is in our opinion-then we expect God to bless us. If we haven't done so well, our expectations are reduced accordingly. In this sense, we live by works rather than grace."

A respected full-time Christian worker I know tells the story of one night where he watched something on television he shouldn't have. Because of this he did not do his quiet time. The next day he had an appointment with someone who was seeking guidance about coming to faith. What would you have done in that situation? Phoned and put off the appointment? My friend went ahead with it and the Lord lead the young man to himself. This illustrates the power of the grace of God and reminds us that all Chistian service we do is only because of his grace. If we are in His service it is by grace and it is by grace that we carry out this service. The Christian worker may have broken a major Christian taboo but in reality God views your pride, envy or any other sin in your heart as rendering you equally unworthy of sharing His message with anyone else. That He covers our sins with Jesus' blood and lets us participate in His service is another powerful illustration of just how amazing His grace really is!

Let us always live by grace and marvel at it's unfathomable depth and enabling power, remembering that it is sufficient for us and perfected in our weakness.

Yours in Christ.

Andy.

Getting back to grace

The more I go on in my Christian walk the more concerned I am becoming at the number of Christians who seems to go astray from the core of the Gospel i.e. the grace and mercy of God. It is a phenomenon I have noticed here in Spain and am sure that it is occurring in many other places.

There seems to be a very subtle undercurrent afoot in some churches here which implies that you are saved by faith but after that you better look out because from here on in you better keep your socks pulled up and your nose clean or God is going to finish with you. There is a big culture of obedience to God being a guaranteed path to achieving your dreams and to a guarantee of blessing. Now do NOT misunderstand me. I am NOT and NEVER will be an advocate of antinomianism (the idea that we as Christians are under no obligation to obey God's law...see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinomianism for a definition.) Paul makes this clear in Romans 6v1-2. "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?"

However, it would appear that these teachers who promise that obeying God will guarantee that you fulfil your deepest desires and guarantee you success in life are in danger of falling into another trap that the Paul is equally censorious of, and that is legalism. Wikipedia defines legalism as "the notion that obedience to a code of religious law is necessary for salvation." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinomianism

From what I have seen this also seems to apply to sanctification and to a life of blessing. What ever happened to "it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose." (Philippians 2v13)(See also 2 Corinthians 9v8 Philippians 1v6, Hebrews 13v20-21) These passages make it clear that it is God who works the desire for obedience in us and who keeps us persevering in our faith. He does not do this because we deserve it. He saves us as an act of grace (God's riches at Christ's expense....He accepts us on the basis of Christ's merits) and He keeps us by His grace too. Peter reminds us in 1 Peter 1v5 that we "are kept by the power of God" until Christ's return when we will be made perfect. (Andrew Bonar has some excellent thoughts on this. See http://articles.christiansunite.com/article20.shtml

Jesus gives a harsh lesson to those who think they can earn God's favour. He said "For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5v20)Thankfully if we are trusting in Christ, God sees you as having never committed any sins and as having done all the good deeds that Christ did on earth. He also sees Christ as guilty of ever sin you ever committed and of every good work that you omitted to do. It was for this reason that Christ lived a perfect life and died as a perfect sacrifice for sin. If you want to access God's blessing on your own merit you will be doomed to failure because you cannot obey perfectly.

You came to God by the cross and it will ever remain the only route to Him. It is the only merit you can plead when asking for His help and favour. Obey Him because you love Him and out of a grateful heart. Don't obey Him to try to curry favour.

Also, take into account that often those who obeyed God best suffered most. Look at the life of Job. If you are striving to please God in the hope of realising all your ambitions this guy's story will not make for pleasant reading. Are you prepared to come to the place where instead of saying "God can make my dream of being a teacher etc come true so I will obey Him" to become "Though He slay me yet will I trust Him."? (Job 13v15) Psalm 37v4 and Matthew 6v33 show us that we must prioritise God's desires and not our ambitions. God's priority is for us to glorify Him. If that means you have to stay in a dead end job all your life He doesn't mind. If that is the best way for you to glorify Him take pride in it. He will magnify His grace to you in it.

For those who have failed remember that God accepted you by His grace and that is the road back. The blood of Jesus cleanses and goes on cleansing us from every indivual sin and avery type of sin, all we have to do is repent. (1 John 1v7,9) Psalm 51v17 and Isaiah 57v15 show us that God values a humble spirit and a heart broken because of sensitivity to sin. We must realise that even our best obedience is tainted by sin and is only accepted by God because of the merits of Christ. If you are not daily beseeching God by the merits of His grace and the blood then dear friend you do not really know your own heart nor do you realise the magnitude of what was done for you. I finish with John Newton's words "T'was grace that has brought you safe thus far and grace shall lead you home"

Prayer....who does it change?

Have you ever read a quote from a Christian writer which you knew to be true but it was just a little too close to home? Those quotes that just seem to be like the doctor giving you an injection you know you need but ouch do they hurt! One such quote I read recently was from the Puritan Thomas Watson. I have never read a writer who has so many quotes on prayer and not only do they abound in number but they continue to be pithy and get to the heart of the issue. Reading many of them, you would think that they came from the pen of John Piper or some equally contemporary author. It was Watson who came up with the epithet "Praying without faith is like shooting without bullets." He also said "Prayer is a bomb which will make heaven's gates fly open."
(Both these quotes are from "The Godly Man's Picture" which is well worth a read.)

The quote which really grabbed me recently, however, was from his weighty tome "Body Of Divinity". He said, "Many pray 'Let this cup pass away' but few 'Thy will be done'. I also came across a similar quote from Jeff Lucas in the daily bible reading notes he produces for CWR called "Lucas On Life Every Day". He said "The essence of prayer is that I bring my requests to God and ask Him to act. How He responds, who He chooses to use, the method of His action-all of that is up to Him and He owes me no explanations."

When we pray it is true that God often gives us what we ask for. I do believe, however, that an important part of prayer is not us getting God to change us mind or doing what we want but often it is about Him shaping us and Him helping us to be submissive to His will. This is the implication of the two quotes above. Many situations in life are painful and we would rather not go through them. But we must learn to trust Him as our Father working all things together for our good. We must learn that "behind each cloud of Providence, He hides a smiling face."

Matthew Henry, in his excellent little book "Experiencing God's Presence" puts it like this, "God expects and requires our prayers...Thus God will keep us by His authority over us. He will keep us continually mindful of our subjection to Him, which we are apt to forget....By frequent, humble adorations of His perfections, you will make a constant, humble compliance with His will easier for yourself. By doing obeisance, we are learning obedience."

Oh Lord! How much resistance is still in our hearts towards your good, pleasing and perfect will! Help us to adore you in prayer and thus learn subjection to your plan for our lives, especially when that means drinking the cup of bitterness. Amen.

God bless you all.

Andy.

New Living Translation

Being a good Ballymena man and loving a bargain, I was very pleased to pick up a good solid compact bible for a fiver over Christmas. I was reading through Colossians in the NIV and found the language quite awkward. I didn't really seem to be able to get past the words to the nub of the message. (I am sure some of you feel like that when reading my often very verbose prose!!)So looking at different versions and value for money I decided on the New Living Translation. I have found it to be very helpful and it is bringing the Scripture to life to me in a new and fresh way.

I particularly found several verses jumped off the page in this version in Colossians which they weren't doing in the NIV. The first was Colossians 1v28. In this version this is expressed "...everywhere we go, we tell everyone about Christ." What a challenge for us as Christians. When you are paying for your groceries at Tesco do you ever think of telling the cashier that Jesus loves them? How many opportunities do we miss on a daily basis? Note that it says EVERYWHERE we go we tell EVERYONE about Christ. WOW!!

The second verse that popped off the page was ch3v2 "Let heaven fill your thoughts." How often do we really think about what heaven will be like? It was said of the Puritan Rihard Sibbes "Of this man let this just praise be given, that heaven was in him before he was in heaven." We often hear it said of some that they are too heavenly minded to be any earthly use. This is totally unscriptural. The passage in Colossians uses heaven as a motivation for us to live godly lives. Thinking on heaven puts perspective on all our problems here and should motivate us to live lives in which we do not get so tied to material wealth.

(http://articles.christiansunite.com/article3023.shtml Here are some tips from the Puritan Richard Baxter on how to do this.)

The Lord bless you all.

Andy.

Renovation of the heart

Today is proving a purple patch for me blog wise! I guess I have had a lot of stuff builidng up that just has to come out!!

I want to encourage any of you who are feeling that your quite times are getting stale to investigate the writings of Dallas Willard. Dr. Willard specialises in writing about the spiritual disciplines (prayer, meditation, fasting, solitude etc.) and his background is that he spent many years as a philosophy professor. I am currently looking at his book Renovation of The Heart In Daily Practice. Jan Johnson has taken Dr. Willard's book Renovation of the Heart and devised activities for every chapter to help you apply the ideas that the author wants to convey.

The first chapter is called Kingdom Possibilities and it talks about the tantalising promises of a life beyond our wildest dreams spoken about in the Bible, especially the New Testament. Willard's very vivid description in this chapter of what drinking the living waters that Jesus offers so that we will never thirst again means particularly struck me. He says it means that "He (the Holy Spirit)will keep [us] from...being driven and ruled by unsatisfied desires." How many of us as Christians can say that loneliness or envy or frustration in work never drives us? Yet it is Jesus' promise to us. This book does not offer quick fixes to such problems but does offer practical guidance of helpful practices and strategies for spiritual growth. The Protestant faith, as a reaction against Catholic acetisism I believe has thrown the baby out with the bathwater in terms of spiritual disciplines. The Puritans were ardent advocates of meditation and look at the books they produced. I believe any book such as this by Williard which offers the prospect of revitalising our spirituality and causing us to long for all that the Bible promises can only be commended and if we read it with an open mind and receptive heart it will be a great blessing.

Love in Christ.

Andy.

2009

Well I'm sure all you guys in Blogland have been thinking that the Tentmaker has shut down his workshop! Here I am to reassure you that this is not the case. One of my resolutions is to try to be more faithful with this because the Lord is teaching me so much these days both through Scripture, good books, life and good friends and I want to share it all for your edification. Also I love to write. I find it very therapeutic and the beauty of a blog is that I don't have to be totally coherent! I can get away with my clumsy mumblings!

Christmas was a very interesting time for me. There was much expectation and anticipation on my part about getting back to Northern Ireland but I found that on arriving there I experienced a bit of reverse culture shock and missed my friends from Algeciras. This does not mean I did not enjoy my time at home. It's just part of the natural process of adjustment to my new situation. I want to thank everyone for the warm welcome in Hill Street and for the opportunities to share what the Lord is doing here in Algeciras.

At home I bought a calendar from the Faith Mission with eagles on it. I have to say that I find birds of prey captivating and especially eagles. The verse for this month is Jeremiah 29v11.For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (N.I.V.) Please pray that I would see God fulfil this promise both in my teaching English, in my work with the church and in my friendships. I am thankful that I have already seen new relationships developing with folks in Cristo Viene and that he is deeping and reinforcing ones that I had already developed. Thank you for your faithfulness in prayer and please continue to place me in His hands.

God bless you real good in 2009.

Andy.