O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
- (from "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" by Robert Robinson)
[In a blog post that claims our christian hearts are NOT prone to wander, a commenter disagrees:]
I will have to put my two cents in as a minority. That's one of my favorite lines. I never saw it from the angle you (and others) do. My heart knows that it is God himself who keeps me faithful and walking with him with any degree of steadfastness. I think it's a matter of the author saying that we have an old nature still within us, and an enemy outside of us that are bent on steering us away from our beloved. So I tear up whenever I sing that line, as I HAVE wandered, and am prone to, but He keeps me til the end. So...the loss of that line would be sorely missed...by me.
There is nothing in the gospel that encourages us to focus on ourselves. Nothing! It's never honoring to God when we take our eyes off of Christ. Never! In fact, the whole point of the gospel is to get us out of ourselves and to "fix our eyes on Christ" (Heb. 12:2). The truest measure of Christian growth, therefore, is when we stop spiritually rationalizing the reasons why we're taking our eyes off of Jesus to focus on ourselves.
It's sin that turns us inward. The gospel turns us outward. Martin Luther argued that sin actually bends or curves us in on ourselves. Any version of "the gospel," therefore, that places you at the center is detrimental to your faith—whether it's your failures or your successes, your good works or bad works, your strengths or weaknesses, your obedience or disobedience.
...
Maturity is not becoming stronger and stronger, more and more competent. Christian growth is marked by a growing realization of just how weak and incompetent we are, and how strong and competent Jesus is on our behalf. Spiritual maturity is not our growing independence. Rather, it's our growing dependence on Christ.
...
The focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. The Good News is his victory for us, not our "victorious Christian life." The gospel declares that God's final word over Christians has already been spoken: "Paid in full." Therefore, we now live with confidence that "there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1).
[The] term ‘decide’ has always seemed to me to be quite wrong…A sinner does not ‘decide’ for Christ; the sinner ‘flies’ to Christ in utter helplessness and despair saying —
Foul, I to the fountain fly, Wash me, Saviour, or I die.
No man truly comes to Christ unless he flies to Him as his only refuge and hope, his only way of escape from the accusations of conscience and the condemnation of God’s holy law.
... The convicted sinner no more ‘decides’ for Christ than the poor drowning man ‘decides’ to take hold of that rope that is thrown to him and suddenly provides him with the only means of escape. The term is entirely inappropriate.
--D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) taken from: Preaching and Preachers, Zondervan, 1972, pp. 279-280.
That which He wrought out in His heart's blood, would He barter it with us for our tears, and vows, ...and feelings and works? He is not reduced to make a market of Himself. He will give freely, as beseems His royal love.
But he that offereth a price to Him knows not with whom he is dealing, nor how grievously he vexes His free Spirit. Empty-handed sinners may freely have what they will. All that they can possibly need is in Jesus, and he gives it for the asking.
But we must believe that He is all in all, and we must not dare to breathe a word about completing what he has finished, or fitting ourselves for what He freely gives to us as undeserving sinners.
-- Charles Spurgeon, from, "Around the Wicket Gate"
God, the great Father, must not be so dishonored in your thoughts as to be conceived of as requiring a price of you! You displease Him when you think that you are to do something or feel something or bring something in your hands as a recommendation to Him.
-- Charles Spurgeon, sermon, "Without money and without price."
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way.” (John 14:1-6a)
Jesus does not just tell us about the Father’s house – he reserves a room for us. It’s a gift. And it grieves his Spirit that we assume we’ll have to pry it from his hands. All along, it’s been his good pleasure to tell us the way home!
--John Dink
The beginning of a longer and thoughtful blog post: here
The central reality for Christians is the personal, unalterable,
persevering commitment that God makes to us. Perseverance is not the
result of our determination, it is the result of God’s faithfulness. We
survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina
but because God is righteous. Christian discipleship is a process of
paying more and more attention to God’s righteousness and less and less
attention to our own; finding the meaning of our lives not by probing
our moods and motives and morals but by believing in God’s will and
purposes; making a map of the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise
and fall of our enthusiasm.
- Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, 128-129
Do you ever get the sense, after a day of little regard for your Lord and
Savior, or after a season of forgetting your first love, that what He whispers to you, across a distance of your own making, is this... "you win again".
He does not force our hand. He lets us win.
There is so much that He could have been for you that day, but you had to have it your way. You win
again. Is that what the father of the prodigal said to the wayward
son, when the son requested the very means for his departure... "you win
again"?
We win again and again, and still He does not let us go. We win
until every drop in our own cisterns runs dry, and then He willingly
becomes for us a fountain of living waters. He lifts the cover, and
looks inside our heart. There is no fight. You can't fight a battle
of love with Him. He will simply reply, "you win again", and
continue His relentless pursuit. For He knows that no other Life can
see you through. And when His love does break through, He's going to
break down your defenses one by one. It's a love that doesn't depend
on you. Nobody stops His Body from ransoming you. He's going to be
there when you fall. It is He that could never let you cast aside
the greatest love of all.
-me
The gospel according to ... The Bee Gees?:
YOU WIN AGAIN
I couldn't figure why
You couldn't give me what everybody needs
I shouldn't let you kick me when I'm down
My baby
I find out everybody knows that
You've been using me
I'm surprised you
Let me stay around you
One day I'm gonna lift the cover And look inside your heart
We gotta level before we go
And tear this love apart
There's no fight you can't fight this battle of love with me
You win again, so little time, we do nothing but compete
There's no life on earth, no other could see me through You win again, some never try but if anybody can, we can
And I'll be, I'll be following you
Oh girl
Oh baby, I shake you from now on I'm gonna break down your defenses, one by one
I'm gonna hit you from all sides, lay your fortress open wide Nobody stops this body from taking you
You better beware, I swear I'm gonna be there one day when you fall I could never let you cast aside The greatest love of all
There's no fight you can't fight this battle of love with me
You win again, so little time, we do nothing but compete
There's no life on earth, no other could see me through
You win again, some never try but if anybody can, we can
And I'll be, I'll be following you
Oh girl
You win again, so little time, we do nothing but compete
There's no life on earth, no other could see me through
You win again, some never try but if anybody can, we can
And I'll be, I'll be following you
Oh girl
You win again, so little time, we do nothing but compete
There's no life on earth, no other could see me through
You win again, some never try but if anybody can, we can
There's no fight you can't fight this battle of love with me
You win again, so little time, we do nothing but compete
There's no life on earth, no other could see me through
You win again, some never try but if anybody can, we can
There's no fight you can't fight this battle of love with me
You win again ...
And as I see that I cannot trust much of what is going on around me, I’ve been struck recently by how often I trust myself in all the wrong ways. I am so prone to believe my own terrible advice, and so prone to doubt and despair when things don’t work out the way I think they should.
...When I lose hope and despair, does that not show that I am more confident in the strength of the world than the strength of my God Who created it? I trust my ability to understand the situation I am in instead of trusting the almighty God Who is at work in even the most difficult of circumstances. I am more confident in my own weakness than I am in God’s strength. In the end, it’s a worship issue. I am not worshiping God when I forsake His word for my own advice. I am not worshiping God when I refuse to trust Him with all that is going on.
It’s all backwards. I’m all backwards. And I need the Gospel to rescue me once again from these things. ...God calls me to trust Him, to rely on Him, to worship Him. He calls me to be free of my own self-confidence, self-reliance, self-worship. He calls me to doubt myself and believe in Him. Only in Christ are we able to say that we are both more sinful and weak than we would like to admit, and yet more loved that we could ever dare to dream.
I’m trying to trust myself less, even as I realize that so much around me is like shifting sand and untrustworthy. This world is subject to constant change, and my heart seems to flow right with it. I need a Rock to stand on. Fortunately Jesus has given us that Rock—Himself. And, as I seek to love and know Him, He continually reminds me that He has made me one with Him and His Father, and I really have nothing to fear. I’m so thankful that He does not leave me to die as I trust myself, but rescues me even then.
"The
way to be accepted is to come - not on any such encouragement, that now
you have made yourselves better, and more worthy, or not so unworthy,
but - on the mere encouragement of Christ's worthiness, and God's mercy."
...
"Men cannot get off from the notion, that it is for some goodness or
service of their own, either done or expected to be done, that God
accepts persons, and receives them into favor."
...
"Spread
all your wickedness before him, and do not plead your goodness; but
plead your badness, and your necessity on that account: and say as the
psalmist in the text, not 'Pardon mine iniquity, for it is not so great
as it was,' but 'Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great.'"
