It's not you Xanga, it's me...

Over the past couple years, having led to be more involved locally, I've been blogging less here. Long story short, over the past few months, God has surprisingly and wonderfully (Isaiah 64:3a!) opened up an opportunity for me to lead a group of women in this study at our church...

Behold Your God: Rethinking God Biblically - official trailer from Media Gratiae on Vimeo.

(You can view the Introductory video as well as the complete Week 1 video (Beholding God: The Great Attraction, featuring A. W. Tozer) at http://beholdyourgod.org.)

I would appreciate your prayers for me as I prepare for and lead the study each week. (Sorry to be late in updating – we've just finished the third week of the study.) As I was recently rereading the last few chapters of Job, these verses in chapter 42 struck me:

7  After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. 8  Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves. And my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” 9  So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what the LORD had told them, and the LORD accepted Job's prayer.

The LORD requires that we (I) speak of Him what is right. When we (I) don't, it provokes him to wrath – His anger burns against us (me)! Considering this rebuke was in regard to private conversations these three men had had with Job, we (I) cannot help but weigh soberly and fearfully what it means for any of us (for me) to speak of the LORD wrongly in public, including blogging and public teaching! No wonder James gives us (me) this stern warning:  Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness... (3:1).

I would also appreciate your prayers for each of the women, as well as myself – that we would not squander this opportunity, but make every effort and apply ourselves diligently, using the means God has provided.

My heart's desire is that the Spirit of God would descend in fire upon this study, so each one of us might enter into a more intimate knowledge of the one true God. Our Lord has told us that this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (John 17:3). May none of us fall short of the blessed privileges Jesus Christ purchased for us at Calvary! I Peter 3:18  For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.

We can and we should use means, but we must not ever put our trust in means or rely upon our own flesh. May the Spirit of the living God be pleased to fall afresh in power upon the means He has appointed, and may I not be rash and resort to the arm of flesh by interposing a "meddling finger"!

Means of grace are put into my hand, but the work is in the Lord's. Watching, praying, and believing do belong to me, and these I must be taught of God, or I shall never do them right; but all deliverance comes from Jesus Christ. And because he does the work, fights the battle, and brings victory, he is rightly called the Saviour. I must watch against the inroads of an enemy; and when he comes in sight, must wrestle well with prayer, and fight the fight of faith; but if I thrust my arm into the battle, Jesus will withdraw his own he will be all or nothing. And if I lay my hand upon the ark, to help to hold it up, as Uzza did, I shall be slain, as Uzza was.

The crime of Uzza is but little understood; some think it a slight one, and the punishment severe. But the same sin destroyed Uzza, which destroyeth every sinner, even unbelief. What slew his body, slayeth all the souls that perish. He could not trust the Lord wholly with his ark, but must have a meddling finger, called in the Bible margin, his rashness. Rash worm indeed to help a God to do his work! and thousands everywhere are guilty of this rashness, and perish by this Uzzaizing. Jesus Christ is jealous of his glory as Saviour: he will not share it with an other; and whoso takes it from him shall take it at his peril.

God forbid I resort to Uzzaizing and thrust forth a meddling finger and rob God of His glory!

"All attempts to promote Christianity by human power and human authority have invariably and necessarily failed... Christianity, when transfused from the book to the person, consists in spiritually enlightened minds and renewed hearts: and by no power can these by produced but that of 'the Spirit of the living God.' –– And even all the legitimate, zealous, scripturally directed efforts for the advancement of the great work, must prove inefficacious and fruitless, unless God give His influence with them." ~ Ralph Wardlaw, "Lectures on the Prophecies of Zechariah" (Stoke-on-Trent: Tentmaker Publications, reprinted 2002 & 2007), 101.

Zechariah 4:6 ... Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Once again, we're at the beginning of a new year, and once again there's a lot of talk about resolutions. Some of you may be familiar with Jonathan Edwards' "Resolutions." Edwards began keeping a diary in the midst of writing those resolutions, and he wrote the following at the beginning of  a new year:

1722-23, Tuesday, Jan. 1. Have been dull for several days. Examined whether I have not been guilty of negligence to-day; and resolved, No.

Wednesday, Jan. 2. Dull. I find, by experience, that, let me make resolutions, and do what I will, with never so many inventions, it is all nothing, and to no purpose at all, without the motions of the Spirit of God; for if the Spirit of God should be as much withdrawn from me always, as for the week past, notwithstanding all I do, I should not grow, but should languish, and miserably fade away. I perceive, if God should withdraw his Spirit a little more, I should not hesitate to break my resolutions, and should soon arrive at my old state. There is no dependence on myself. Our resolutions may be at the highest one day, and yet, the next day, we may be in a miserable dead condition, not at all like the same person who resolved. So that it is to no purpose to resolve, except we depend on the grace of God. For, if it were not for his mere grace, one might be a very good man one day, and a very wicked one the next... Source:  Jonathan Edwards' Works Volume One.


Psalm 33:
12  Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD,
the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!
13  The LORD looks down from heaven;
he sees all the children of man;
14  from where he sits enthroned he looks out
on all the inhabitants of the earth,
15  he who fashions the hearts of them all
and observes all their deeds.
16  The king is not saved by his great army;
a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
17  The war horse is a false hope for salvation,
and by its great might it cannot rescue.
18  Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,
19  that he may deliver their soul from death
and keep them alive in famine.

Psalm 147:
10  His delight is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his pleasure in the legs of a man,
11  but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him,
in those who hope in his steadfast love.

O LORD our God, along with Jonathan Edwards, we confess that we often find ourselves spiritually dull! Apart from the motions of Your Spirit – without the divine sap flowing from the Vine to the branches – we are nothing, and we can do nothing! Show us that if left to our own devices, we would quickly and painfully discover every thought and intent of our hearts to be only evil continually. Show us that apart from the supply of the Spirit we would irreparably and irretrievably fall.

Merciful and gracious God, in this new year of 2014, pour out grace upon grace on Your Church, that we may be a delight and a pleasure to You! Fill us with the fear of You, so that as as we seek to make resolutions according to Your will, and as we endeavor to walk in the good works You have ordained for us, we might put no confidence in our flesh, but rather hope in Your steadfast love and trust in Your Holy Spirit to equip us to do Your good pleasure through our risen and reigning Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, all to His glory alone (Heb. 13:20-21).

There is no happiness or blessing for us apart from having You as our Help. May our boasting be in You continually! May we show our profession of You to be genuine and not lip service, and may we demonstrate we are Your holy nation and Your chosen people as we depend not upon ourselves but upon Your grace. Like Your servant David, may we learn to love, embrace, and call upon You as our strength for the praise of Your name.

Psalm 18:
1  I love you, O LORD, my strength.
2  The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
3  I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised,
and I am saved from my enemies.

Psalm 146:
1  Praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD, O my soul!
2  I will praise the LORD as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.
3  Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
4  When his breath departs he returns to the earth;
on that very day his plans perish.
5  Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the LORD his God,
6  who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them,
who keeps faith forever;
7  who executes justice for the oppressed,
who gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets the prisoners free;
8  the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
the LORD loves the righteous.
9  The LORD watches over the sojourners;
he upholds the widow and the fatherless,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
10  The LORD will reign forever,
your God, O Zion, to all generations.
Praise the LORD!

Related:

With the New Year Come New Resolutions, but How Can We Become Entirely New? (Lloyd-Jones)
New Year’s resolutions? … not “without God’s help” (Jonathan Edwards)
my best resolutions
your resolution – “Divine Intervention” by Lecrae
Blessed dependence ~ “Leaning upon her beloved”
by my God I can leap over a wall (Psalm 18:29b)
“I cannot consider myself to have been a believer (in the full sense of the word)”

Zechariah 1:8  "I saw that night, and behold a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtles in the valley..."

He sees a grove of myrtles, a beautiful shrub, with glossy, dark green leaves, and white, star-like clusters of fragrant flowers, whose leaves exhaled their richest odor only when bruised. This was a symbol of the theocracy, the Jewish Church and nation. The Church is not a cedar, in its queenly pride, or an oak in its giant strength, but a lowly myrtle, humble, unpretending, and exhaling its sweetest graces when bruised by the weight of affliction. Such was the existing state of theocracy, and hence the despondency of the people, who thought that so lowly a thing must be wholly overshadowed and destroyed by the proud and godless powers of this world.

But in the midst of these myrtles he sees a man on a red horse, whom we afterwards discover to be the angel of Jehovah, that divine person whom we trace all along the history of the Old Testament, in every manifestation of God to man, in visible form, until in the New Testament we find him manifest in the flesh. It is the second person of the mysterious Trinity, the great head of the Church. The fact is thus symbolized that he is in the midst of the Church, unseen and hence though seemingly so feeble and lowly, she has this inhabitation as her glory and defence.

~ from "Zechariah" by Thomas V. Moore (orig. published New York: Robert Carter, 1856; reprinted London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1958, 1961, 1968), 46. The Scripture translation is Moore's own rending.

In the midst of the Xanga 2.0 transition, I've found myself annoyed and upset over the current appearance of my blog – the fact that it is currently so very bare bones. But then I read those words of Thomas V. Moore, after which came the conviction of the Holy Spirit. To explain...

Lately, I've been grieving and mourning over the mass of Western Christianity that has been deceived and is all too readily discarding the simplicity that is in Christ – congregation after congregation and denomination after denomination lapsing...  and, as a result, scores of professing Christians are laboring fervently – not according to the Spirit, but according to the flesh – and unequally yoking themselves with the spirit and wisdom and might of this age, striving to appeal to and attract the natural man, and seeking to appear wise, powerful, and noble in the eyes of the world.

II Corinthians 11:1  Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me. 2  For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. 3  But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. (KJV)

I Corinthians 1:26  For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27  But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28  God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29  so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30  He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. 31  Therefore, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (ESV)

As we look at the Church in comparison to the world, it's far too easy for us to be tempted to think, as Moore wrote, that

so lowly a thing must be wholly overshadowed and destroyed by the proud and godless powers of this world.

And I found myself sliding into that very same temptation regarding my blog! (I Cor. 10:12-13)

I do want my blog to be helpful to those who are reading. And it's not that I want my blog to look crummy. Yet I don't want it to look good or to serve others at the expense of diminishing or concealing the glory and the simplicity of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Gospel in any way at all ~ II Corinthians 4:1-7; I Corinthians 2:1-5; Romans 1:16-17. (And yes, in case you're wondering, I do realize some of the quotation marks are displaying incorrectly in this post... and I have no idea why... Quite fitting indeed!)

As pilgrims in this fallen world, Christians are in a constant warfare – we are engaged in battle against our flesh, the world and the devil. It has always been a challenge for God's people to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and not to love the world or the things in the world (including the acclaim of the world), but rather to remain unspotted, as "a lowly myrtle, humble, unpretending," and to stay on the narrow path and to shine as lights amidst the lure of the fleshly aroma of pretentiousness and self-promotion exuding from the world.

I am thankful for one word in particular in that Scripture from Zechariah:  "I saw that night..." – what a wonderful reminder that even in dark, gloomy and benighted days of Christianity such as we are in today, Jesus Christ is still in our midst. But as soon as we begin to lose sight of the truths that our Lord is in the midst of His people, and He is building His Church in spite of all appearances, we will begin to resort to relying on earthly means and jockeying for popularity and position in the world as if we were never born again, and as if we were seeking to please men and not the living God. Instead of continuing to walk in the Spirit, we begin to walk in the flesh. Instead of relying on Jesus Christ as our defense and instead of lifting Him up as our glory, we rely on ourselves, and in the process, we rob our God of the glory due His name. We travel down Asa's foolish path:  our hearts are no longer loyal to our God, and we no longer rely on the LORD as we ought. (See 2 Chronicles 16.)

* * *

"Now 'dove's eyes' set out not only the Bride's affection, and love to Christ, but also the nature of her love, which is the thing here mainly commended, as simplicity, chastity, and singleness, for which the creature is commended, Matt. x. 'Be simple as doves.' And this is the commendation of the love that true believers have to Christ, that it is chaste, single and sincere love: singleness is the special thing Christ commends in his people."

~ from "An Exposition of the Song of Solomon" by James Durham (originally published 1840, reprinted Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1982), 118.

* * *

Lord Jesus Christ, baptize me afresh with Your Holy Spirit, that I might take Your easy yoke upon me, learn from You, and become more like You. May Your grace abound to me so I might rest and rejoice in being a lowly myrtle, humble and unpretending, for You are a Savior who is meek and humble in heart. Yes, You are the Lion of Judah, but You became a Lamb, and You humbled Yourself and You were crucified in weakness and raised to life again by the power of God. Help me to learn to delight to be weak as You were weak, that the power of God might be made perfect in my weakness.

Merciful and gracious LORD of hosts, transform my deceitful, desperately wicked, and covetous heart into a dove-like heart that loves, relishes, guards and glorifies the simplicity that is in the heavenly Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, and His glorious Gospel. Incline my heart to Your holy and heavenly ways, and disincline my heart from corrupt and worldly ways. May the love of Christ so fill my heart that my love for You might be single, and I might be constrained by Your love to put no confidence in my flesh or in earthly wisdom, but rather by Your grace, may I labor in the Spirit with simplicity and godly sincerity in all I do, including blogging. For there is no true rejoicing and no true boasting apart from having such a heart!

II Corinthians 1:12  For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward. (KJV)

II Corinthians 1:12  For our boast is this: the testimony of our conscience that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. (ESV)

Related posts:

• Why I blog and the only kind of recommendation I should seek
• Why I write and minister - My credo for being a godly encourager
• Postcards from God in England: the frisking at Heathrow
• dedication 2010 (reflections on God's Word & God's grace ~ no sugar coating...
• dedication 2010 (addendum): may He temper my tongue with love
• blogging, view count, comments, numbers and the glory of God
• "Why Do I Write Poetry"
• blogging to build up the ruined Church of God / expository exultation
• Here I stand & from here I cast (devoted to prayer & the ministry of the Word)
• my desire: "fearless and uncompromising" like Duncan Campbell, Moses, and Paul
• blogging with NO compromise: the article of justification for your joy & God’s glory

Photo credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Myrtus_communis11.jpg / CC-by-SA 3.0