Five years ago today I began blogging here, and not long afterwards God put me on a journey I could not have foreseen. I was born again, and I had received forgiveness of sins back in 1982. I knew I was a child of God in some sense, I didn't have any doubts about my final destination – and yet not long after that time I began to be tormented with guilt, depression and doubts about my past and my past sins, and my past sins and failures began to plague, burden, overwhelm and paralyze me.

In the fall of 2008, I was driven to look into the Scriptures (where else could I go? God alone has the words of eternal life!). At that time I wrote a series of posts on dealing with past sins and guilt, in which I reviewed the work of Christ on behalf of the believer (on my behalf!). If you're struggling with assurance that your sins have been forgiven and your guilt has been taken away in Christ, I would encourage you to look at those posts here. Not long after writing those posts, God was gracious to me, and He gave me a felt assurance of forgiveness, which I wrote about several months later in my post my new song: "My soul is clean".

In spite of the firm assurance of forgiveness of sins God had given me at that time, I began to see there was much, much more to the Christian life that I was lacking. For years, I kept saying I wasn't a joyful person, and I read about joy in the Bible, but I patently denied those promises were possible for me. Thank God that He was longsuffering and merciful towards me!

A couple years before that time, I remember reading Psalm 86:4 where the Psalmist is praying, "Rejoice the soul of Your servant," and a seed was planted. I saw there that as much as I tried I couldn't make myself joyful, but joy was a gift I could ask God for. Finally, in the fall of 2009 I began to cry out to God in earnest to give me Habakkuk 3 joy (please see my post the laborer's lamentation & affirmation) – and much to my surprise and delight, less than a week later God imparted to me a sense of joy in Him I didn't think possible. (We must remember that our God is the God who is for us, the God with whom all things are possible, the God who delights to give His children good gifts, and the God who can do exceedingly above all we can ask or think!)

Many of you don't know those things about me. I've been writing about assurance and fighting for joy since that time, and today's post is my 136th post on it. As I mentioned in an Advent post WHY HAS JESUS COME? So we might draw near to God | Even a Vapor, I would be the last person I thought would be doing such a thing! But God!

Many of you may read my posts today or read my comments to you, but you don't know the journey God has had me on, so I would encourage you to look back at the way God has led me, so it might serve as an encouragement for you to begin to look at the Scripture, so you might begin to ask hard things of God (for nothing is too hard for Him!), so God's Spirit might open your eyes to see the inheritance God has for you – and then you might be strengthened to enter into that inheritance (enter into Christ!) and enjoy it (enjoy Christ!) beginning today!

If you're only looking at this life as a holding place, if you're only biding your time here looking forward to heaven, know this – you are robbing yourself of the riches of the inheritance Christ died to give you and – and not only that, but you are robbing the lost world of a testimony to the power and goodness of a living God who wants us to be His witnesses here, bubbling up with living water – and not only that, but you are grieving, limiting and quenching the Holy Spirit of God. That was the sin of the Israelites time and again throughout the Old Testament. There are many, many examples to be found, but in particular Psalm 78 tells us how Israel had no real understanding or expectation of what God could do, and so they sinned and rebelled against God as they tested and provoked the Holy One of Israel time and time again.

My dear brothers and sisters, let us take heed and learn from their example, so we do not follow in their footsteps! Our God is a God who can spread a table in this wilderness! Let us not be sluggish, let us not be unbelieving, let us not drop as carcasses in the wilderness, but let us press on to enter into in greater and greater measure the inheritance God has given us! Let us travel from grace to grace and from glory to glory. The veil has been torn! Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty! Let us take hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of us! Let us trust that the God who redeemed us wants to do more for us than He did for us at our beginnings! Let us look with anticipation that we might see the light shining brighter and brighter until the final Day! Having carried, seen and tasted the grapes of Eschol, may God be gracious to us and give us that different Spirit that possessed Joshua and Caleb, rather than the complacent spirit that consumed the other 10 spies – and prevented them from crossing over Jordan into the promised land!

In Acts 26, we read Paul's account of His encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ on the Damascus Road, as Jesus commissioned Paul...

And in Ephesians 3, Paul wrote:

I don't write here for fun, profit or profession, but I write because my desire is that God might use my words to open your eyes and turn you from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God, so you might receive forgiveness of sins AND an inheritance among those who are being sanctified by faith that is in Jesus Christ. Many of you may already be saved, you may have received forgiveness of sins – but I ask you this: Do you have any real sense of the unsearchable riches of Christ? Have you been given a spiritual sight of your inheritance in the saints?

I consider myself the least of all the saints. I know all that I have I have received by the sovereign grace of God. In His wonderful will (though painful & grievous at the time), God began to hedge up my way, so I might begin to hunger and thirst for Him as I had never done before – and then He began to grace me with glimpses into His glorious inheritance, the unsearchable riches of Christ. Because God's Spirit has begun to open to my eyes to begin to see the unsearchable riches of Christ, I long for your eyes to be opened to these treasures as well. I consider all that God has given me a stewardship, and I want to be found faithful. And not only that, but I want you to know the joy of the Lord in your pilgrimage here on this earth. I know how miserable it is to be unassured, doubting, whining and discontent, and I hate it when I begin to slip and lapse back into that! That is so very far from the abundant life Jesus Christ died to give us!

For years I was like the older son in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15), the son who dutifully stated at home – but his eyes were blinded to the riches of his father's inheritance. Yes, he worked faithfully, but he had no joy. Yes, he labored diligently, but he had no understanding of the love of his father. He had no real understanding of his privileged position, and he was oblivious to the riches that were already available to him:

O! This is exactly what our heavenly Father is crying out to each of us through His Holy Spirit – because by faith in Jesus Christ, we enter into a heavenly inheritance with all the saints. May God give us ears to hear Him! God doesn't want us just to be saved from hell fire, but He wants us to enter into full assurance of faith, a living fellowship and a joyful pilgrimage with Him through the Lord Jesus Christ – beginning this very day. Our Lord desired that the church at Laodicea be shaken out of their lukewarmness so she might open the door to Him and sup with Him! But, sad to say, how few of us have any inkling or understanding of these things. We see Christianity as a creed, a philosophy or an obligation – but it is access into the Most Holy Place! Jesus Christ died in our place that we might be brought back to God, that we might have intimate fellowship with the living God through the sacrifice of the body and blood of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. The way has been opened to us! O! How pitiful we are! How deceived we are! The Psalmists wrote things like: "One thing I ask... One thing I seek..." What was that one thing? It was fellowship with the living God! They panted, fainted and longed to be with God, to be near to God! They cried out for the living God! Do we? Shouldn't we?! I plead with you not to waste your life here, but to be fervent and zealous to seek to know the riches of your inheritance.

The devil works to keep us out of the Kingdom of God, and even once we're in the Kingdom, he schemes to keep us blinded to the riches of the inheritance that is ours as children of God. He wants to keep us in that position of the older son, or in that position of the man who had some sight, but professed he only saw men as trees walking, not having a clear view of the goodness and love of God and His desire to have fellowship with us. My friends: we are the bride of Christ. God's love for us is jealous and zealous!

The devil wants to keep our ears closed to what the Spirit has to say to us. He wants to keep our eyes shut to having a spiritual sight of our inheritance in the saints. Even though we are freed from the power of the devil, our adversary continually prowls and constantly works to fight to keep us in the dark, to keep our eyes closed to the fullness of what God in Christ has for us. The apostle Paul prayed that the eyes of our understanding would be enlightened, and that is my prayer for you.

Notice there that Paul was praying for those who were already saints. Implied there: there is much, much more for all of us to know of the riches of the glory of our inheritance! In Ephesians 3:8, a verse I referenced above, Paul talks about the unsearchable riches of Christ. By His love constraining us and by His Spirit strengthening us, may we press on to know Christ and begin to search His unsearchable riches!

I've written a poem about my desire for you to know Christ's unsearchable riches, and then following that, I've included an excerpt from an article about Richard Sibbes' (1577-1635) teaching on sealing with the Spirit. I would strongly encourage you to go and read the entire article here <http://www.puritansermons.com/banner/beeke01.htm>.

Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light (Col. 1:12, KJV),

By the grace of God, blogging to the glory of God so you might begin to enter into the inheritance He has for you, that your joy might be complete,

~ Karen

From Joel R. Beeke's "Richard Sibbes on Entertaining the Holy Spirit":

     ... Sibbes thought of the Spirit’s sealing in two ways: (1) a one-time sealing, and (2) a sealing that came later as one matured in the Christian life.

     The once-and-for-all sealing of salvation is granted when a person first believes in Christ and God’s promises. Sibbes taught that as a king’s image is stamped upon wax, so the Spirit stamps the believer’s soul with the image of Christ from the very moment of believing. Such sealing produces in every believer a lifelong desire to be transformed fully into the image of Christ.

     This seal, which every believer possesses, whether he is conscious of it or not, serves as a mark of authenticity. It distinguishes the believer from the world. As merchants mark their wares and herdsman brand their sheep, so God seals His people to declare that they are His rightful property and that He has authority over them, Sibbes said.

     The second aspect of Sibbes’s doctrine of sealing is more elusive. Owen argued that Sibbes said sealing had to occur twice in the life of the believer. But Sibbes was not arguing for a second measure of positional assurance, as if to imply that God was not altogether sure of our stance with Him or His stance towards us upon regeneration. Sibbes plainly stated: “Sealing of us by the Spirit is not in regard to God, but ourselves. God knoweth who are His, but we know not that we are His but by sealing. The sealing then is for our benefit exclusively, and not for God.”

     So the second kind of sealing Sibbes wrote about was a process. It was the kind of assurance that could increase gradually throughout our lives by means of singular experiences and by daily, spiritual growth. This sealing had degrees; it could grow with spiritual maturity. Sibbes wrote: “The Spirit sealeth by degrees. As our care of pleasing the Spirit increaseth so our comfort increaseth. Our light will increase as the morning light unto the perfect day. Yielding to the Spirit in one holy motion will cause him to lead us to another, and so on forwards, until we be more deeply acquainted with the whole counsel of God concerning our salvation.”

Links to my series "Dealing with Past Sins & Guilt"
my other posts on assurance and fighting for joy including:

my 3rd Xangaversary: "His grace abounded to this chief of sinners"
why Naphtali?
Advent # 5 WHY HAS JESUS COME? So we might draw near to God | Even a Vapor (why Naphtali? ~ revisited)
Advent #1 WHY HAS JESUS COME? that we might have life & life more abundantly
Advent # 7 WHY HAS JESUS COME? So we might be satisfied with Him

learning to run without fear
"The Christian should not just believe the truth, and know it..." | the Father's assurance
update w/ excerpt: Lloyd-Jones' sermons on the role of experience in Christianity
The flags unfurled ... Christ's eternal banner | Lloyd-Jones ~ a third type of assurance
The Father's Inheritance (Eleven days' journey ~ A lamentation & an exhortation)
the door, the sword, the crown ~ through faith & patience (Hebrews 6:11-12)
As a deer pants ... Is your soul panting for God? (Psalms 42 & 43)
"The honeycomb I lift!" ~ Will you join me? I Samuel 14:24-30

Scripture quotations unless otherwise indicated 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. Emphasis mine.

Work found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RichardSibbes.jpg  / CC BY-SA 3.0 / {PD-Art|PD-old-100}

Today would have been the 240th birthday of the evangelical divine Legh Richmond, born in Liverpool January 29, 1772.

In his lecture History of Revival (1740-1852) # 2, Iain Murray cited a minister who said, "Brother, we are only half awake—we are none of us more than half awake." When I heard that, my ears perked up, and I did a little sleuthing on google. I found the quotation was from Legh Richmond. Until that time, I'd never heard of Richmond.

Murray explained that such a half-awake state very much described the spiritual condition prior to the Great Awakening (and I'll add that with but a few exceptions, it describes the spiritual condition we face today here in the west).

Then Murray read the words of Dr. Increase Mather from 1721, who at age of 82 was remembering back to years prior:

Mather's reference there is to Ezra 3, the time after Israel's return from exile when the temple was being rebuilt...

If we keep looking at ourselves as our own benchmark, if we keep comparing ourselves to ourselves, or if we in the Church only choose to compare ourselves to society at large, we're going to think we're doing all right, we'll say we're awake, and we'll go ahead and keep patting ourselves on the back, but in reality, we're not doing all right. We'll be guilty of myopia of the worst kind, a tunnel vision of a most dangerous and deadly sort, for these matters deal with both the eternal destiny of souls and the glory of God. When the Church isn't walking as she ought, when she is half-awake, when those of us in the Christian Church remain half-awake, then God's name is blasphemed, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not being published to the ends of the earth, and all the while souls are dying daily apart from Jesus Christ.

We in the Church are falling so far short of the Church's former glory and the glory God intends for us. For example, in Isaiah 62, God's expectations for His people are laid out:  righteousness going forth as brightness and salvation as a burning torch, and it is then the nations shall see our righteousness. If you look at the Church, would that be your first thought of her?

We are so, so far from that shining city on a hill God intends us to be. Only as we examine what God's expectations are for His Church, what His desire for each and every one of us as members of His Body is as we find them in the Scripture, only as we look back at the Church's beginnings and then look back at those times of revival and awakening, it is only then that we will begin to make a right assessment – to begin to see ourselves as God sees us.

Let us look back at those times when God's people have been humbled, when they had come to the end of themselves, that they saw their insufficiency and their need to rely on Christ rather than on their own ingenuity, machinery and cleverness. Let us look back to those times when the Spirit blew, when God's people came to embrace their own poverty and neediness, when they humbled themselves and fell prostrate before the throne of God and sought the Lord with strong tears and cryings, and followed hard after Christ and clung to Him and Him only, and continued to examine themselves, casting off all their earthly props, despising themselves and no longer putting confidence in their own flesh.

May God give us eyes to examine ourselves in light of those saints who remained steadfast in the Word of God, lifted up Christ and Him crucified; to examine ourselves in light of those saints who tarried in prayer, those who were faithful watchmen who importunately pleaded for God to rend the heavens and waited upon God to pour out His Spirit upon them, confessing that without Him they could do nothing, and so they continued to seek a heavenly effusion and endowment – for a God-imparted power that was not their own. Let us look upon those on whom the Holy Spirit fell, these men and women and boys and girls became consumed and compelled and emboldened by the baptizing fire and love and light and life of the Holy Spirit – it is only as we do so, will we begin to have a right assessment of our condition and how pitiful we are today, those of us who profess the name of Christian, so we might confess that we are only half awake—we are none of us more than half awake.

The Reverend Alfred Stackhouse, an Anglican minister, referred to Richmond in his lecture, "The Lord Is at Hand." Here's an excerpt (emphasis mine).

Luke 12:35  “Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, 36  and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. 37  Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them. 38  If he comes in the second watch, or in the third, and finds them awake, blessed are those servants! 39  But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into. 40  You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

For more on Legh Richmond, please see http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Richmond,_Legh_%28DNB00%29.  I'd highly recommend your reading Richmond's "The Annals of the Poor," <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19671/19671-h/19671-h.htm>.

Please Note: If God has been giving you a desire to see the church revived, please see my other sites, tent_of_meeting (prayer for revival) and deerlife (ministry encouragement), please comment below and/or message me. I would also encourage you to read these posts which express some of my heart for revival.

• Naphtali News: the Ministry of the Word & Prayer
• postcards from England: "The Burden for Revival" (ML-J)
• postcards from England: are we excited over a dead fish and a car wreck?
• postcards from England: "the fog is lifting on My Church"
• my holy ambition
• Here I stand & from here I cast (devoted to prayer & the ministry of the Word)
• Lloyd-Jones 30 years later ~ Thank you, Dr. Lloyd-Jones for preparing the way
• Revival resources, etc.
• More revival resources: opportunity and eyes to see the ruins, a burden from God
• the lost treasures of Christianity & the call to pray for revival (Bible reading: Ezra 1)
• Reformation Rebels: Are you willing to be a rebel for the sake of the Church?
• adopting God's purpose for the nations is for your joy & His glory (Letter 76 on joy)
• Are you storming heaven – or are you sleeping?
• Lent III. - Are you looking at the fields?
• "the infinite significance of the eternal Kingdom"
• Naphtali News: God speaking to me about my failures & the one thing needful
• Why not pray for the baptism of the Holy Spirit

Photo credits:

Scripture quotations unless otherwise indicated 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.

• What is a nominal Christian?
• if it's not Your will for me, then it's Sodom
• Two Fountains ~ Where are you drinking? What is flowing? Don't waste your drinking!
• Kingdom-Obsessed People don't seek "great things" for themselves
• Be not an Esau (Genesis 25:29-34, Hebrews 12:15-17)
• My love affair . . . whose trumpet, whose glory & incomplete joy
• you say you want Jesus
• "Garbage In" (Are you truly His disciple?)
• Keep me away from the paths of the destroyer that I might behold Your face. (Psalm 17)
• Letter 25 on assurance and fighting for joy (a strong craving ≠ His joy)
• true repentance leads to joy (Letter 37 on assurance & fighting for joy)
• Are you a radiant Christian or a drunken old woman? (letter 82 on assurance & fighting for joy)
• escape the vial of deception
• occupy ~ do you seek your own – or the things of Christ? does His Spirit occupy?
• Why do I write poetry?
• tangled
• Blessed Thirst in the Valley of Baca ~ Psalm 84
• Ash Wednesday: Do you despise yourself? | Job 42
• What is Biblical mourning? (Ash Wednesday)
• Biblical mourning, assurance and false guilt

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.