January 9, 2009

• Why I blog and the only kind of recommendation I should seek

  I've been blogging for almost two years now. Even before I began blogging, I considered why I should and why I shouldn't blog. I knew then I could easily blog for all the wrong reasons, e.g.-making my blog all about me and not about Christ, seeking to make myself known rather than Christ known, seeking great things for myself rather than seeking to make Him great, pleasing men rather than pleasing God.

  As I continue on this blogging journey, God periodically checks me and I need to ask myself why I am blogging, what my goals are for blogging, why I shouldn't be blogging and so forth. I occasionally review these things in my head and sometimes scribble them down in my journal or make comments on others' blogs about them, but I haven't really blogged much at all about blogging on my own blog.

  So why do I blog?
  
  Why I blog

  First of all, I do want people to read my blog, but (and this a huge but) I can't simply want people to read my blog in order to boast that I have a lot of readers, I can't simply want people to feed my desire for attention via view counts, footprints, props, recommendations, stars or whatever.

  It's too easy for me to begin to compare and contrast my blog with other blogs. Comparing and contrasting is constructive to a point, but it becomes destructive as soon as it begins to lead me into covetousness, envy, jealousy, boasting or vainglory. Those things reek of the stench of Satan rather than the sweet aroma of the meek and humble Lamb.

  I can't make it my aim to make myself known or popular but rather my aim must be to make Christ known. If in the process of blogging I become known or popular, that's fine, but that can never be my primary aim. God is very clear that He will not share His glory with anyone. And He has been very clear with me that this is really His blog and not mine.

  I do not want to resort to questionable tactics or unscrupulous means to get people to read my blog. I want to be able to say with Paul:

  But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. II Corinthians 4:2.

  The Gospel message is powerful. I don't need to and should not resort to shenanigans and manipulation and maneuvering as I give it out. When we do that, we risk obscuring the glory of the Gospel.

  And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. I Corinthians 2:1-5.

  I desire to lift up Christ and not myself.

  I desire to keep the Gospel message pure and not pollute it or water it down in any way.

  That said, I do want people to read my blog because, as God leads me, I am striving to give out all the words of His life as He gives them to me (Acts 5:20).

  I'm not going to hide my blog under under a bushel by any means, yet I need to be careful about how I promote my blog and how I write and not resort to worldly or questionable methods and never compromise the Word of God.

  I know God will hold me accountable as a steward of the words He has given me.

  My goal is to be a faithful servant, a good steward of His Word.

  I want people to read this blog because I am trusting that whenever and wherever the Word of God goes out it will not return void but will accomplish the purpose God has for it (Isaiah 55:8-11).

  I want people to read my blog because as I faithfully sow God's Word, God's Word has a power in it that no other word has. The Word of God is God-breathed and living and active; it has a power to bring life to dead souls and to revive and renew dry and downcast souls (e.g.-Hebrews 4:12-13; Romans 1:16; 10:17, II Timothy 3:15-17). So, like the apostle Paul, I am eager to preach the Gospel and give out God's Word, and often find myself saying with the apostle Paul, "Woe is me if I do not preach the Gospel."

  I didn't say and couldn't have said that a few years ago, but as God has continued to grow in me a hunger and passion to spend time with Him in His Word, I find I really have no choice but to give out His Word and make Him known.

  Oswald Chambers wrote that the apostle Paul "had realized the call of God, and there was no competitor for his strength."

  Evelyn Underhill wrote about a "subtle yet insistent pressure" Jesus puts upon us.

  There is no competitor for my strength. I feel that subtle yet insistent pressure.

  As God equips and strengthens me, I can do no less than give out God's Word to build up His Church in order to help fellow Christians run the race God has set before you with perseverance and joy. I do not say this pridefully but with a sense of awesome responsibility and with a confession that I struggle to run that same race well so I might not be disqualified. By the grace of God I am endeavoring to walk in the calling with which God has called me and continue to press on to take hold of that for which He has taken hold of me for I know I have not yet attained, and I also know that God will hold me accountable for the gifts and talents and abilities and opportunities He has given me.

  For now, God has opened doors for me to be here on Xanga as a herald of the Good News, rather than on a rooftop or on a high mountain.

  God's Words have the potential to bring life and to change lives as they fall on hearts and minds and ears touched by the Holy Spirit. My own words do not have that power. One reason I love Martyn Lloyd-Jones is that though he was a most brilliant man, he kept reminding his congregation that in himself he had no message–that the only message worth preaching, the only message which is life-giving or has any power is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and it was a message he received from God.

  That's exactly how I feel.

  That is why I say with Paul:

  I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. Acts 20:32.

  I don't commend you to myself or to my words, but only to God and to His Word.

  God chooses all sorts of people to sow His Word and very often they are ordinary people, people the world might overlook. People like Amos, the shepherd who was called to be a prophet. People like Simon Peter the fisherman, the one who denied Jesus three times, was used to turn the world upside down beginning at Pentecost. People like Matthew, the despised tax collector. People like the Samaritan woman who had five husbands. People like you and people like me, a wife and a mother with no special qualifications or formal training. People like you and me who may have lots of skeletons in their closets and less than squeaky clean and sparkling personal histories. People like you and me who may have done things to burn bridges in ministry. People like you and me who have sinned and stumbled and bumbled and continue to do so.

  Just like Peter, Jesus welcomes people like you and me to breakfast and then restores us and commissions us to go feed His sheep.

  Don't you love it that our God is merciful and gracious and does not punish us as our sins deserve because Jesus took that punishment in our place? Don't you love that God is not a respecter of persons and that He can and does use anyone He pleases? Don't you love it that God chooses to use the weak, foolish and base things of the world? Don't you love it that God takes men like the apostle Paul and John Bunyan who considered themselves the chief of sinners and sends them out to sow seeds for the Kingdom? Absurd? Yes. But those are the mysterious ways our inscrutable God has chosen to reach the ends of the earth with His Gospel of grace, so He alone gets the glory due His name. Impossible with men but possible with God!

  So, as God puts His living Gospel words of life into me, I am responsible to give them out as He leads me and in the power He provides, knowing full well that only in the Gospel is there any power and that I am not sufficient for these things. I am but an earthen vessel and I continue to offer myself to Him for His service for His glory and not mine.

  Take my life, and let it be
  consecrated, Lord, to thee;
  take my moments and my days,
  let them flow in ceaseless praise.

  Take my hands, and let them move
  at the impulse of thy love...

  (Frances Ridley Havergal, 1874)

  Seed sowing is a serious and amazing and mysterious and wondrous undertaking for it involves the living God and the living Word of God and the souls of men. And through the living Word of God we can impact men and women and boys and girls for all eternity.

  If you read my blog and admire the words I've written but they have no lasting impact in your lives, I will be disappointed. If you read my words and then go away and forget what you've read, I will be sad. (See James 1:21-25.) But I know the Holy Spirit is the One who works to appropriate and apply God's Word to your life and mine. The Kingdom of God does not come in word but in power. I can write all I want and it can all be very doctrinally correct, but if the Spirit does not work in and through my words and the Spirit does not work in and through those who read my words, there will be no lasting fruit. My responsibility is to give out the Word as He directs and to pray as I sow it: to pray that His Word would go out in His power and and it might fall on good soil and be received with power and mixed with faith so it might grow up and bear eternal fruit.
  
  As I write, I pray God would circumcise hearts and minds to receive His Word, so those of you who read might be challenged and that the Holy Spirit would not allow you to go unchanged but His Word would bear much fruit in your lives to His glory.

  So the greatest recommendation any of you can give me is that you are growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, you are bearing fruit, much fruit and lasting fruit in your lives and are coming to resemble your Father in heaven and His Son Jesus more and more each day.

  

  Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. 3 And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. II Corinthians 3:1-3.

  In most of you, I will not see or hear about that growth or that fruit in my lifetime, so I must be content with that and trust God is working even when I don't see very much of the harvest. I admit that's hard sometimes. I like to have feedback and rejoice to hear how God is working in people's lives, but I continue to trust that God will give me such feedback as I need to encourage me but not too much so I might become puffed up.

  God's heart desire and my desire is that we all build up His Body and grow up into Christ.

  And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Ephesians 4:11-16.

  Yes, I do know a few of you personally, many here where I live, so I can speak with you face to face over a cup of coffee.  It is truly a joy to see how God is working in your lives and how God has chosen to allow me to share in that. And I thank you because so many of our talks together (and e-mails) inspire me to press on and spark ideas for me to write about and/or help me to process what I've been thinking about. In reality, my blog has a multitude of co-writers. God has truly gifted me with a patient and longsuffering husband, as well as a wonderful group of friends, all of whom will sit and listen to (and/or read) my seemingly never-ending stream of consciousness about the spiritual life. You know who you are and I am so thankful for each and every one of you, and in case I haven't told you lately, you encourage me far more than you can imagine.

  God has given me quite an eclectic group of friends from a multitude of churches and denominations. I love God's church and I value the diversity amidst the unity. Yes, we don't and we won't always see eye to eye on everything, but when we are able to see the necessity and sufficiency of Christ's blood for us, we begin to put aside our nonessential differences so we can press on and run together the race God has for us.

  Some of you whom I've never met have graciously commented and/or written me to let me know how you are bearing fruit by the grace of God through the words He has given me to write. I am always excited and encouraged as I hear stories of how God is using this blog to encourage and strengthen you to run with Him. I thank you for taking the time to do that.

  It is truly a high honor to share in God's work in your lives. It continually amazes and humbles me how God has a plan to use all He's brought me through to minister to others, particularly as He continues to work through those painful and heartbreaking chapters of my life, those chapters I am often tempted to keep under lock and key, those dark and dreary places which still echo and scream and moan with cries and groans too deep for words, those circumstances I almost thought were even too filthy and too depraved and too ugly for almighty God to redeem. Praise be to our Redeemer who doeth all things well and works and redeems all things for our good and for His glory and for the building up of His Body.

  God is so good. He's so good to me.

  I must tell you that I do look forward to that Day that we will all be able to rejoice together in the presence of God and hear Him say, "Well done, good and faithful servants. Enter into the joy of your Lord." Each day I look forward more and more to seeing Jesus face to face, but until then I press on and strive to work faithfully as God works in me, until that day God calls me to my final Home in glory. My desire is that as I blog I do so for the Gospel's sake so I might share with you in its blessings.

  I also know full well that I must constantly keep guard over my own life, so I might preach what I myself practice for I am the greatest hypocrite and biggest sinner I know.

  The apostle Paul wrote:

  I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. I Corinthians 9:24-27.

  I'll close with these words of Paul from I Thessalonians as an example of what I aspire to be as I minister in Jesus' name.

  For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, 4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. 5 For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness. 6 Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. 7 But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. 8 So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. 9 For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. I Thessalonians 2:3-9.

  Redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ by the free grace of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
  blogging to the glory of God through the power of the Holy Spirit,
  all for your upbuilding, dearly beloved brothers and sisters in Christ,

  Karen

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  Scripture quotations marked "ESV" are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  • 6:32 PM
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