The way of trust

The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of the pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it as his presence and his promise.

— Brennan Manning (Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin's Path to God)

Effectually, Particularly, and Perfectly

Should we say “Christ died so that sinners might come to him”? Or, “Christ died for sinners”? There’s a big difference. Did Christ’s work on the cross make it possible for sinners to come to God? Or did Christ’s work on the cross actually reconcile sinners to God? In other words, does the death of Jesus Christ make us save-able or does it make us saved?

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Certainly, we need to come to Christ in faith. But faith is not the last work that finally makes us saved. Faith is trusting that Jesus has in fact died in our place and bore the curse for us—effectually, particularly, and perfectly.

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Christ does not come to us merely saying, “I’ve done my part. I laid down my life for everyone because I have saving love for everyone in the whole world. Now, if you would only believe and come to me I can save you.” Instead he says to us, “I was pierced for your transgressions. I was crushed for your iniquities (Isa. 53:5). I have purchased with my blood men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation (Rev. 5:9). I myself bore your sins in my body on the tree, so that you might infallibly die to sins and assuredly live for righteousness. For my wounds did not merely make healing available. They healed you (1 Peter 2:24).”

--Kevin DeYoung
Excerpts from chapter 15 of "The Good News We Almost Forgot"
source: here

The hard work we're called to

I used to think that when the Apostle Paul tells us to work out our salvation, it meant go out and get what you don’t have—get more patience, get more strength, get more joy, get more love, and so on. But after reading the Bible more carefully, I now understand that Christian growth does not happen by working hard to get something you don’t have. Rather, Christian growth happens by working hard to daily swim in the reality of what you do have. Believing again and again the gospel of God’s free justifying grace everyday is the hard work we’re called to.

This means that real change happens only as we continuously rediscover the gospel. The progress of the Christian life is “not our movement toward the goal; it’s the movement of the goal on us.” Sanctification involves God’s attack on our unbelief—our self-centered refusal to believe that God’s approval of us in Christ is full and final. It happens as we daily receive and rest in our unconditional justification.

...Our main problem in the Christian life is not that we don’t try hard enough to be good, but that we haven’t believed the gospel and received its finished reality into all parts of our life.

--Tullian Tchividjian

Source: here

The one who holds the future cares

If we can once again look to the cross and grasp the height and depth of the love of God for us in Jesus, then how can we doubt his desire to give us everything necessary for life and godliness? If we feel the smile of the Father’s favor toward us in Christ, in spite of our history of sin and failure, then we will be encouraged to step out again in faith. We will still not know what the future holds, yet if we know that the one who holds the future cares for us, that first step upward on the long road back to obedience becomes possible again.

— Iain Duguid
Esther and Ruth
(Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2005), 157-158

Sanctification means this...

We have been united with him in a death like his . . . .
Our old self was crucified with him . . . .
One who has died has been set free from sin.
(Romans 6:5-7)


We miss the radical nature of Paul’s teaching here to our great loss.  So startling is it that we need to find a startling manner of expressing it.  For what Paul is saying is that sanctification means this: in relationship both to sin and to God, the determining factor of my existence is no longer my past.  It is Christ’s past.

-Sinclair B. Ferguson,
“The Reformed View,” in Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification,
edited by Donald L. Alexander (Downers Grove, 1988), page 57.

Remember who canceled our sin

"Sin is not canceled by lawful living."


--Martin Luther

The real fig leaves that hide us from God

Our best duties are as so many splendid sins. Before you can know you are at peace with God, you must not only be made sick of your original and actual sin, but you must be sick of your righteousness, of all your duties and performances. There must be a deep conviction before you can be brought out of your self-righteousness; it is the last idol taken out of your heart.

...as Adam and Eve hid themselves among the trees of the garden, and sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness, so the poor sinner, when awakened, flies to his duties and to his performances, to hide himself from God, and goes to patch up a righteousness of his own. Says he, "I will be mighty good now — I will reform — I will do all I can; and then certainly Jesus Christ will have mercy on me."

But before you can know you are at peace with God you must be brought to see that God may damn you for the best prayer you ever put up; you must be brought to see that all your duties — all your righteousness ... are so far from recommending you to God, are so far from being any motive and inducement to God to have mercy on your poor soul, that he will see them to be filthy rags.

-George Whitefield
Snippets taken from his Sermon, "The Method of Grace"

Come each day with nothing in my hands

The gate of Mercy is opened, and over the door it is written:

"This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."

Between that word 'save' and the next word 'sinners', there is no adjective. It does not say, 'penitent sinners', 'awakened sinners', 'sensible sinners', 'grieving sinners' or 'alarmed sinners'. No, it only says, 'sinners'. And I know this, that when I come, (and it is as much a necessity of my life to come to the cross of Christ today as it was to come ten years ago) — when I come to him, I dare not come as a conscious sinner or an awakened sinner, but I have to come still as a sinner with nothing in my hands.

-Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
preaching on John 3:18, 17 February 1861.

Repentance

Repentance is not so much a doing as a depending. It is not so much a striving for pardon as a posture of humility. In true repentance we confess our total reliance on God's mercy. We acknowledge the inadequacy of anything we would offer God to gain his pardon. In true repentance we rest upon God's grace rather than trying to do anything to deserve it. Reliance on God alone for mercy is the essence of repentance. Repentance is not a work of turning to new behaviors or to any conjured phrases or emotions in us. Such human efforts cannot be our basis for being made right with God. Repentance is not a turning from one category of works to another; rather it is a turning from human works entirely to God. New obedience follows true repentance, but we put no hope for pardon in what we do.

-Bryan Chapell, Holiness By Grace

Something Better

I never used to be afraid. I was all faith.

Or so I thought.

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What I feared most was being forgotten. I was afraid to live an insignificant life.

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During one weekend away spent in whitespace, I decided to share my list of disappointments with God. After writing pages and pages of unanswerable dilemmas, God gently and lovingly brought two pictures to my mind:

* In the beginning, there was nothing.

It was in nothing, the Holy Spirit hovered, where God created something.

* Mary’s empty womb. How can this be? she asked.

It was in nothing, the Holy Spirit hovered again, where Jesus became flesh.

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Nothingness. That’s me! I had never been so happy to discover I had become the perfect place for Jesus to rest in.

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It irrevocably changed my direction. I decided to stop setting my sights on where I was going or what I would end up doing in the future. I set my sights on who I was walking with — Jesus.

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I realized the best life — the most significant life I can live — is the one I grow in my faith.

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In the Old Testament, the patriarchs of faith recognized God’s blessings by taking possession of a physical Promised Land. God’s presence was symbolized by physical blessings of harvest and goods.

This all changed after Jesus arrived in the New Testament. The author of Hebrews tells God prepared a spiritual blessing – something better.

“And all these [patriarchs of faith listed earlier],
having gained approval through their faith,
did not receive what was promised,
because God had provided something better for us…

fixing our eyes on Jesus,
the author and perfecter of faith”
Hebrews 11:39-12:2

Our something better isn’t a plan.
Our something better is a Person.

Our spiritual Promised Land is life with Jesus.

-Bonnie Gray
Snippets from a worthwhile post: here