(Letter 163 in my series of posts on assurance and fighting for joy...)

Yesterday @TheXangaTeam announced they're going to a paid blogging platform, and that there is a possibility that Xanga may be shutting down for good after July 15 (link).
 
Many thoughts went through my head, the primary one being that I really wanted to have a publicly saved record of what I'd written here in case Xanga does end up shutting its doors for good. I do have all the archives of my blogs downloaded onto my laptop, so that's not really the issue. I started blogging at this site in 2007, and since then I added a couple more blogs...

• this site (http://napthali_deer.xanga.com), opened 2/12/2007, with 1344 public posts.
• tent of meeting (http://tent_of_meeting.xanga.com), opened 3/28/2009, with 204 public posts.
• deerlife (http://deerlife.xanga.com), opened 3/14/2010, with 70 public posts.

If you do the math, that's 1618 public posts, not including this one. Now, granted, as I reread a lot of my first posts here, I squirm, as I had been barely on the edge of and just beginning to dip my toes into the vast and glorious ocean of the doctrines of grace (a.k.a. Calvinism) –– but now I've taken the full plunge! But I have decided to keep all my posts as I had first written them, as they are for a record of the journey God has had me on.

In light of the Xanga announcement yesterday, I could see I was beginning to react out of my flesh, rather than respond in God's Spirit, and I knew I wasn't in a very good place at all –– far from it! I was becoming fearful, worried, upset, and anxious. I was quickly sliding down into that noxious place of grumbling, murmuring, and whining –- headed full-steam down a path very far away from exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit!

I went for a walk yesterday afternoon and tried to listen to some sermons to numb and distract myself, to escape and avoid the circumstance that was looming in front of me –– and in a vain and futile attempt to avoid looking at my own deceitful and desperately wicked heart.

As I was walking, I was chewing on the sovereignty of God in permitting this to happen: for God to lead me here to Xanga and then to lead me to the possibility that all I've written here could be snuffed out very soon...

Then, in His merciful kindness, the Hound of Heaven came down that path pursuing me (Psalm 23:6) and began to shake me and bring me back to my senses with these verses from Colossians 1:

15  He [the Lord Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16  For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17  And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18  And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. (ESV)

15 He [the Lord Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. 18 And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.

God created Xanga. Xanga was created through Him and for Him. And He was and is before all things, including Xanga, and in Him Xanga has held together together. Why?

No matter what's happening here in this little corner of the world known as Xanga, the Lord Jesus Christ will have the preeminence. Xanga or no Xanga –– in spite of all appearances –– the Lord Jesus Christ IS going to get the preeminence! (God's sovereignty continues to be my sanity!)

In Isaiah 63:7-14, there's a recounting of God's deliverance of Israel from Egypt, and we read of God's purposes there:

God's thoughts and God's ways are higher than ours.... inscrutable and unsearchable and unfathomable! Whenever we ... whenever I whine and complain, I am attempting to be His counselor! God, be merciful to me, a sinner!

Romans 11:33 Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!

34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has become His counselor?”
35 “Or who has first given to Him
And it shall be repaid to him?”
36 For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.

God's desire is that His name might be displayed and made everlasting and glorious, that He alone might receive glory forever and ever –– or, as the apostle Paul writes in Colossians 1, that the Lord Jesus Christ might be preeminent.

All things (Xanga's continuing OR closing) are heading toward this one great and glorious and wonderful end (in truth, it's just a beginning!):

Philippians 2:9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Revelation 5:8 Now when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9 And they sang a new song, saying:

“You are worthy to take the scroll,
And to open its seals;
For You were slain,
And have redeemed us to God by Your blood
Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation,
10 And have made us kings and priests to our God;
And we shall reign on the earth.”

11 Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures, and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, 12 saying with a loud voice:

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain
To receive power and riches and wisdom,
And strength and honor and glory and blessing!”

13 And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying:

“Blessing and honor and glory and power
Be to Him who sits on the throne,
And to the Lamb, forever and ever!”

14 Then the four living creatures said, “Amen!” And the twenty-four elders fell down and worshiped Him who lives forever and ever.

And everything (Xanga's continuance or Xanga's closing) has been foreordained with that end in mind!

In the meantime, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, I am to walk worthy of God's calling... no matter what happens ... whether there will be any Xanga after July 15 or not...

And then I was brought back to these earlier verses in Colossians 1, and I was chastened, for I could see how desperately short I was falling:

9 For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; 10 that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 11 strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy...

I WASN'T walking with joy, and I hated that, and I despised myself for that... particularly because of how much I have tasted and seen God's goodness –– how much God has shown Himself to me and has continued to impress His mercy, love, grace and care upon me in so many wonderful ways, pouring out grace upon grace upon grace; and particularly as I've exhorted others that the joy of the Lord is available to all believers (Psalm 86:4), and even how I had just spoken of those verses in Colossians 1 to a friend the night before! ... I was humbled as I saw how very weak I still am, and how faulty and ill-formed my foundation of faith in Jesus Christ still is, and how wholly reliant I must always be on His strengthening and glorious power, and how constant in prayer I must be for His strengthening and glorious power, so I might rejoice in the Lord always, to shine as a light in this dark world, to the praise of His glorious grace!

Unlike the pilgrims scattered abroad, to whom Peter was writing, in my current trial, I was NOT rejoicing with joy inexpressible and full of glory (I Peter 1:3-9). But thanks be to God for His manifold mercies and His kindness in Jesus Christ –– He continues to stretch His hands out to a disobedient and contrary child such as myself, and leads me to repentance through His Holy Spirit through His Holy Word –– which at that point was continuing to pierce and discern and cut deeper and deeper and deeper ... (Job 5:17 Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects; Therefore do not despise the chastening of the Almighty. 18 For He bruises, but He binds up; He wounds, but His hands make whole.)

Hebrews 4:11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 13 And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.

After having been reminded of God's sovereignty over all things for the preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ, and my lack of joy due to my not resting in Christ as I ought –– on top of all that, the story of the fire that burned up years of William Carey's (1761-1834) work was brought to mind. I was already familiar with this event, but I recently heard about it again in John Piper's sermon "The Lord Stood By Me . . . That All the Nations Might Hear,"  which I'd listened to a couple weeks ago:

William Carey, the father of modern missions left for India from England in 1793 and never came home. He labored 40 years without a furlough. He lost two of his three wives in death. When he had a fever they attached 110 leeches to his thigh. And on March 11, 1812—after almost 20 years of work—a fire broke out and destroyed years of irreplaceable work. The draft of the great polyglot dictionary. The Sikh and Telugu grammars. Ten version [sic] of Bible that had been going through the press. The translation of the Ramayana which he and his partners had been working on for six years.

Carey was out of town in Calcutta. When Marshman told him tears filled his eyes, and later he said,

In one short evening the labours of years are consumed. How unsearchable are the ways of God! I had lately brought some things to the utmost of perfection of which they seemed capable, and contemplated the missionary establishment with perhaps too much self-congratulation. The Lord has laid me low, that I may look more simply to him (Mary Drewry, William Carey: A Biography, p. 154).

Source: http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/the-lord-stood-by-me-that-all-the-nations-might-hear / By John Piper. ©2013 Desiring God Foundation. Website: desiringGod.org

When I thought of my blogging in comparison to twenty years of Carey's (and the other missionaries') work in frontier missions, there's really no comparison at all! When I thought of the fact that I have full archives of all my blogs sitting safely in the memory of my laptop (as well as in the time machine backup), there's no comparison at all! And with that, I could see how weak and despicable and unprepared for any true suffering I really was.... And, I could also see how I am too prone to much self-congratulation, and how quickly I can forget that anything I write here of any worth, i.e. - anything that will withstand the fire of God's judgment – is all of Him, and it is all to His praise, honor, and glory alone ~ e.g. - Psalm 115:1; Isaiah 26:12; I Cor. 3:7; John 15:1-8.

At that point, as I considered the fire that consumed years and years of Carey's work, more Scripture (this time from Hebrews 10), was brought to mind to show me once more how I was not resting in Christ as I should have been. This commendation of the Jewish Christians was in such marked contrast to my own state:

I was NOT joyfully accepting the potential plundering of my goods (of my blog writings). I had been too easily been tossed about for I had lost sight of the better and enduring possession -- a knowledge of God Himself through the Lord Jesus Christ!

Holy God, forgive me for hardening my heart and not entering into Your rest. Thank You that Your goodness and mercy pursued me even to the pig sty of my own making, and Your kindness brought me back to my senses and to repentance! Grant me an increased sight and taste of Your glorious and all-surpassing riches. Strengthen me by Your Word and Your Holy Spirit, so that no matter my circumstances (Xanga or no Xanga), I might pray without ceasing and be diligent to enter Your rest, to walk with patience and longsuffering with joyfulness, that I might joyfully accept the plundering of my goods as I more fully and firmly embrace and enjoy You alone as the better and enduring possession, and find everlasting rest, durable peace, strong consolation, unspeakable joy, and unsearchable riches, and an incorruptible inheritance in You alone, even as I walk as a pilgrim here in this uncertain, turbulent, and stormy world. Hallelujah! What a Savior! Gracious God, thank you for laying me low like William Carey, that I may look more simply to You!

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.

Revelation 6:12  When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, 13  and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. 14  The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. 15  Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, 16  calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, 17  for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”

“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"

John 3:36  Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

Romans 3:21  But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22  the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23  for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24  and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25  whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26  It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Right now God is commanding you to repent and believe, so you might be saved from His just wrath by grace through faith in the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ. One day the Lord Jesus Christ will return to judge the living and the dead, and if you have not believed in Him, you will not be hidden from His wrath –– His wrath will remain on you –– and you will not be able to stand before Him, and you will be cast off into eternal punishment and everlasting fire.

Acts 17:29  Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30  The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31  because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

32  Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33  So Paul went out from their midst. 34  But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

  

We're almost a full month into 2013 now, and perhaps you've done that very same thing this year . . .

The 400 men who felt their need of David

The other night I was in a Bible study of I Samuel, and I shared how I LOVE the account of the 400 men who gathered themselves to David (I Samuel 22:1-5). Why do I love this account? Because David himself was an Old Testament type of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the meek and lowly posture of those men is exactly the position poor and needy sinners find ourselves as we first come to Christ, as well as the position we must remain in as we continue to abide in Christ and let His words abide in us –– as we live as branches seeking to draw vital sustenance from the True Vine day by day, and moment by moment ~ John 15:4  Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. 5  I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing... Songs 8:5 Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?).

I Samuel 22:2  And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men.

Have you felt your need of the Son of David?

In like manner, every one who comes to Jesus must acknowledge and confess from the heart that he is in distress, in debt and discontented –– or, using Joseph Hart's words, you must come to feel your need of the Son of David.

"The Son of David is ready to receive distressed souls, that will appoint Him their captain and be commanded by Him. He receives all who come unto Him, however vile and miserable..."

Isn't that a marvelous truth?! The only begotten Son of God is the Son of David, and He is ready to receive distressed, indebted and discontented souls! Jesus Christ receives all who come unto Him! What Good News that is to all who have known such distress, debt and discontentment... however vile and miserable we might be! Look through the Gospels and see how tax collectors and sinners drew near to eat with Him! See how women and children flocked to the arms of the Good Shepherd! All you who are distressed today, come to Him, however vile and miserable you might be! Remember, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ delights in showing mercy (Micah 7:18) –– He delights in lavishing love, mercy and grace upon the chief of sinners through the Lord Jesus Christ! Whosoever will may come to the True Bread and the Living Water to eat and drink, so you might never hunger or thirst!

O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood,
    to every believer the promise of God;
    the vilest offender who truly believes,
    that moment from Jesus a pardon receives.

(from Fanny Crosby's "To God Be the Glory")

In First Samuel 22, each and every soul who came to David had been filled with a holy distress. In the exact same way, every soul who ultimately comes to Jesus also shares in that same holy distress. That holy distress is the precious gift of God, and it is wholly necessary, for without a sense of holy distress, we will neither despise nor cast off our own fleshly confidence, our hard-hearted, stubborn sufficiency, and deadly self-reliance. And only as we come to see that any and every thing that comes from our own flesh and any and all help we might receive from the arm of man is all vanity and dung (as the apostle Paul said in Philippians 3:1-11), will we humble ourselves in the sight of God and cast ourselves wholly upon the God who is rich in mercy to save us. Christ must save, and Christ alone!

Not the labor of my hands
Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone;
Thou must save, and Thou alone.

(from Augustus Toplady's "Rock of Ages")

• Unless and until you see you are not fit in and of yourself, unless and until you feel your need of Him, you will never come to Jesus Christ, the only fitting Savior for sinners.

Until we cry out with Peter, "To whom shall we go?..." (John 6:68), until we see that there is no salvation in any other, until we admit our spiritual bankruptcy, until we own that we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away (Isaiah 64:6-7), then we will not approach the mercy seat for the gift of salvation which is available through Christ alone.

Acts 4:12  Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

Unless and until we feel our need of Him ... unless we see our true spiritual condition, unless the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, righteousness and judgment (John 16:8-11), our spiritual position is no different than the rich man in the parable of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus:  a great gulf fixed exists between ourselves and Christ (Luke 16:19-31); we are infinitely far away from the fitness He requires.

 
And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed:
so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot;
neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
(Luke 16:26)

If you're not aware of it, the name Lazarus is Greek for the Hebrew Elazar, meaning "God has helped." If you're familiar with Robert Robinson's hymn "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing," you know the line:

"Here I raise my Ebenezer..."

(based on I Sam. 7:12:  Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Eben–ezer, saying, Hitherto hath the LORD helped us)

The Hebrew root word "ezer" means help. Notice how the name Elazar contains the root "azar" ("ezer"), plus the name of God ("El"). How blessed are helpless beggars like Lazarus whom God has helped! Blessed are men, women, boys and girls whom Christ is calling from every tongue, tribe and nation –– poor and needy souls who come to see their helplessness and feel their need of Christ. Blessed are those who have come to the end of themselves and can do nothing but appeal to God for mercy and grace through Jesus Christ, to seek the LORD for His help and to praise Him for His help poured out from the throne of grace. Blessed are those who proclaim the joyful song:  "I could do nothing. I could not help myself. But I was enabled to feel my need of Him, and this poor soul cried out to the Lord, and He heard my cry! God has helped! God has been my Helper, and He will continue to be my Helper till the end! He is able to help me and save me to the uttermost!"

• Have you owned that you are helpless? Have you received a spiritual sight of your need of the Son of David?

O! for the moment we feel our need of Christ: –– blessed heavenly fitness! –– we flee to Jesus Christ (just as those men gathered to David), and as we cling to and follow hard after Him, as we embrace our Savior and make Him our Captain, here are some of the exceeding great and precious promises we can embrace along with Him:

Matthew 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4  Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. 5  Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. 6  Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

Those 400 men had come to see they had no fitness in and of themselves. They were in debt, and they knew it, and they freely acknowledged they had come to the end of themselves and their own supplies, and they gathered to David.

Along with those men, have you been blessed to see your own poverty of spirit, and come to the Son of David? Have you been given a true spiritual sight of your own spiritual bankruptcy and come to Jesus? Have you been convicted of sin and seen that you have fallen short of the glory of God? Have you seen that there is a sin debt which you could never pay in and of yourself? Has your mouth become stopped as you have seen that your are rightly judged as guilty before God? Have you seen that your sin and your guilt needs to be covered and forgiven and washed away by the blood of the Lamb? Have you seen that in order to stand unashamed in the presence of a holy God you need a righteousness that far exceeds that of the Pharisees? Have you had a view of the thrice Holy God and become undone? Have you seen a glimpse of God's just wrath that rightly judges sinners, and that the wrath of the Lamb cannot be satisfied by anything else but the blood of the Lamb shed on Calvary's cross? Have you mourned your own sinfulness and your sin? Have you seen the Lord Jesus was crucified in your place to take away your record of debt? Have you seen that you are a debtor to mercy alone? Have you cried out for a new, soft heart to replace your heart of stone? Have you humbled yourself in the eyes of the Lord? Are you hungering and thirsting for a righteousness than you in your own best efforts can never produce? In other words . . .

• Unless you come to a spiritual sight that you have no fitness in and of yourself, you will never come to the only fitting Savior for sinners!

About that word discontented, Albert Barnes writes:

"Discontented... The phrase here denotes those who were exasperated by Saul's tyranny."

In their exasperation, those 400 men keenly felt their need of a new sovereign. As a result, they sought out David and joyfully cleaved to David and willingly submitted themselves to Him as their captain. Have you been brought to see your own inability and your own lack of fitness? Unless you do so, you cannot feel your need of Jesus Christ, the Son of David. Know this, He is only a Captain to those whose eyes have been opened their own vileness and lack of fitness and to those who have become exasperated by the tyranny of their own flesh, the devil and the world. How do we show we have made Him Captain? We rejoice with trembling as we kiss the Son (Psalm 2), we cast off our idols and bow to Christ and Christ alone as the King of kings and Lord of lords, and willingly offer ourselves to follow the Lamb wherever He goes. Having been freed from slavery to sin, the devil and the world, having been united to Christ and raised with Christ, through His resurrection power at work in us, we seek to mortify the deeds of the body by the Spirit, we put on the whole armor of God and walk circumspectly so we might guard against the wiles of the devil, we take every thought captive, and we walk in the light as He is in the light and we reject the darkness of the world.

John Elias:  a sinful, vile and miserable man who saw himself as nothing and felt his need of Christ

Most of you know how much I love reading Christian biography. I'm currently reading a book about  the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist minister, John Elias (1774-1842). Elias was a man who felt his need of Christ and showed himself to be one of the company who gathered to Jesus Christ. Near the end of his life, Elias penned the words below. Like the Psalmist (Psalm 45), Elias' heart overflowed and his tongue was the pen of a ready writer, as he freely and openly and joyfully confessed his own lack of fitness and unreservedly expressed his utter need of Christ and happily exulted in God's sufficiency and fullness and fitness that overflowed to him from the throne of grace and overflows to every poor and needy sinner who comes boldly to the great High Priest, Jesus, the Son of God.

"I have written a brief account of my life from infancy till now (sixty-seven years of age), of the Lord's goodness towards me, and a review of his work amongst the Calvinistic Methodists. I have written this in my sick room, not knowing but that I am on the plains of Moab, on the brink of Jordan. I wrote a few lines now and then, in sorrow and through difficulty considering myself as writing every line in the presence of God, and writing perhaps that which will be read when I shall be quiet in the grave. I have nothing to say of myself, but of my sinfulness, vileness, and great misery; but I would be happy to speak of God's goodness, mercy, and grace towards me. 'This is the poor man that was raised out of the dust, and the needy man that was lifted out of the dunghill, and set with princes, even with the princes of his people'. If any good has been done by my imperfect labour, God in his grace has performed it. To him belongs the glory; I was as nothing."

~ John Elias, in "John Elias: Life, Letters and Essays" by Edward Morgan (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1973, revised edition published in one volume), 179, boldface mine

If you have never felt your need of Jesus Christ, if you consider yourself fit and sufficient in and of yourself, if you are continuing to put confidence in your own flesh (see Philippians 3), I plead with you to pray to God for His Holy Spirit to enlighten you, to impart to you a true sense of your need of Him, that you might join the apostle Paul, John Elias, those 400 men who gathered themselves to David, along with millions and millions of saints, and come to experience the spiritual fitness that God requires.

Advent #3 WHY HAS JESUS COME? not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance
First Week of Advent: The Most Scandalous Bailout Ever
Bible Reading: Luke--God's Kingdom Economy: Losers Who Win, or Grace Is Amazing Only to Those Who See Themselves as Wretched....
Why not pray for the baptism of the Holy Spirit
trusting the eagles' wings (reliance on the Holy Spirit)
Blessed dependence ~ "Leaning upon her beloved"
Birthday reflections ~ "Keep me an infant" (Isaiah 46:1-4)
by my God I can leap over a wall (Psalm 18:29b)
Can two walk together... Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit...
the poor & needy & joy ~ Psalm 35:9-10 | letter 105 on assurance & fighting for joy
at death and in life "there is only one thing that matters" (Lloyd-Jones' last days)
Outcast vine, faithless bride ~ What beauty? What did you see?
Surely none is righteous, no, not one ~ The Pharisee's Warning (Ecclesiastes 7:20, Romans 3:9-10)

Photo credits:

Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fitness_Center.JPG  / CC BY-SA 3.0

Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HK_Wong_Chuk_Hang_%E5%8C%85%E7%8E%89%E5%89%9B%E6%B8%B8%E6%B3%B3%E6%B1%A0_Pao_Yue_Kong_Swimming_Pool_31_Weighing_scale_May-2012.JPG  / CC BY-SA 3.0

Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gustave_Dore_Lazarus_and_the_Rich_Man.jpg / {{PD-Art|PD-old-100}}

Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Roos_-_John_Elias_(1839).jpg  / {{PD-Art|PD-old-100}}

Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Holy Bible.