Tried With Fire

In Sunday school, we've been going through The Mortification of Sin by John Owen, the Puritan Paperback version. I first read it as I was transitioning to reformed theology 10 years ago, and I am glad for the opportunity to reread this book again now that I am out of the cage-stage. While we are called to put to death the deeds of the body, we do not do this to earn our salvation but because we have been saved . This is also not asceticism and denial for denial's sake, nor do we achieve a higher plane of spirituality as a result. This is a normal part of sanctification, a call to daily, practical holiness, which is enabled by the Holy Spirit as he works within us. This past Sunday, one of the elders, Chad Boudreaux, taught the class on Chapter 6 which covers what mortification is . Chad is the chief compliance officer for his company. In my words, he is in charge of helping his company to "give no opportunity for the flesh" by establishing policies and proce...

He shall not be afraid of evil tidings; his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord. (Psalm 112:7) Suspense is dreadful. When we have no news from home, we are apt to grow anxious, and we cannot be persuaded that "no news is good news." Faith is the cure for this condition of sadness; the Lord by His Spirit settles the mind in holy serenity, and all fear is gone as to the future as well as the present. The fixedness of heart spoken of by the psalmist is to be diligently sought after. It is not believing this or that promise of the Lord, but the general condition of unstaggering trustfulness in our God, the confidence which we have in Him that He will neither do us ill Himself nor suffer anyone else to harm us. This constant confidence meets the unknown as well as the known of life. Let the morrow be what it may, our God is the God of tomorrow. Whatever events may have happened, which to us are unknown, our Jehovah is God of the unknown as well as of the known. We are determi...

A Twitter conversation this morning reminded me of what I had posted in the past about Fascinating Womanhood -  The Andelin Connection?   and  Roles - Another Andelin Connection?   Today's post was in draft form for more than a year.  I guess it's time to hit the publish button. I had been posting about a possible connection between Helen Andelin's bestselling book, Fascinating Womanhood  (FW), and Christian women's books/teaching. Andelin was a Mormon who believed she was called by "God" to teach women the secret to a Celestial Marriage.  The average reader may take those words as a poetic phrase describing happily-ever-after wedded bliss, but the wording is specifically Mormon. Because of her religious devotion, I don't think it is simply a case of her beliefs seeping into her book via osmosis. She saw herself as a prophetess on a mission. 1  Here is what Andelin says about Genesis 3:16. The father is the head, president, or spokesman of ...

I listened to How to Think by Alan Jacobs again. If you haven't read it, I strongly recommend it. If you have read it, it's worth rereading because we're still learning how to think well. At the very end, Jacobs gives the reader  The Thinking Person's Checklist, which includes this: "5. If you do have to respond to what everyone else is responding to in order to signal your virtue and right-mindedness, or else lose your status in your community, then you should realize that it's not a community but rather an Inner Ring." The Inner Ring Jacobs is referring to is described in an address by C.S. Lewis in which he warns his hearers of the pull of the Inner Ring, the inner circle, the people in-the-know and the ones who really matter.  It may not be the visible authorities, but it is the power behind the throne, as it were. The main draw is the desire to belong to this select group, and its seductive power may cause us to do unethical things to gain and ...

"The Lord hath been mindful of us: he will bless us" Ps. 115:12 I can set my seal to that first sentence. Cannot you? Yes, Jehovah has thought of us, provided for us, comforted us, delivered us, and guided us. In all the movements of His providence He has been mindful of us, never overlooking our mean affairs. His mind has been full of us -- that is the other form of the word "mindful." This has been the case all along, and without a single break. At special times, however, we have more distinctly seen this mindfulness, and we would recall them at this hour with overflowing gratitude. Yes, yes, "the Lord hath been mindful of us." The next sentence is a logical inference from the former one. Since God is unchangeable, He will continue to be mindful of us in the future as He has been in the past; and His mindfulness is tantamount to blessing us. But we have here, not only the conclusion of reason but the declaration of inspiration: we have it on the Holy G...

A friend on Facebook shared a quote from an evangelical preacher who opined that marriage is the "greatest instrument of sanctification." "greatest" Really? I question this for several reasons.  - Does that mean those of us who are single, divorced, or widowed will be incompletely sanctified?  - Is the marriage relationship the instrument or the environment where sanctification takes place. If it is the former, then it goes against the 1689 London Baptist Confession 13.1: "They who are united to Christ, effectually called, and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them through the virtue of Christ's death and resurrection, are also farther sanctified, really and personally, through the same virtue, by His Word and Spirit dwelling in them ; the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified, and they more and more quickened and strengthened in...

pg. 272, Please don't try this at home. American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism , Matthew Avery Sutton, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014, 459 pages. About 10-11 years ago, I underwent a major theological shift from Arminianism to Calvinism and eventually becoming confessionally reformed (if LBC 1689 counts.) Because of this change, I felt compelled to find the answer to this question, "Why did I believe what I used to believe?" So I began to read church history specifically of the late 19th and 20th centuries. But the more I read, I realized that other forces shaped the formation of American Christianity. So my reading broadened beyond the history of the church to the history of the nation. American Apocalypse is the latest of these books that I have fondly categorized as -  grimly fascinating.  Different historians have looked at the rise of fundamentalism and evangelicalism from different angles such as the Scopes trial 1 or the ...

I flipped through the New Testament last night and wrote a list of verses on the love of God. In all those instances in my non-exhaustive search, God's love was shown to us by the sacrificial and giving love of Jesus Christ, which ultimately led him to the cross. There's no way we could comprehend the perfect inter-trinitarian love of the Godhead. It would be more than we could handle or even witness in our fallen, creaturely state, but God demonstrated his love to us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom. 5: 8) I then wrote a list of verses on how God's love is supposed to be seen in believers, and there was a definite parallel. The evidence of God's love in our lives was related to our sacrificial love toward others, especially in the body of Christ. For example - A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you h...

For thou shalt be His witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard" (Acts 22:15). Paul was chosen to see and hear the LORD speaking to him out of heaven. This divine election was a high privilege for himself; but it was not intended to end with him; it was meant to have an influence upon others, yea, upon all men. It is to Paul that Europe owes the gospel at this hour. It is ours in our measure to be witnesses of that which the LORD has revealed to us, and it is at our peril that we hide the precious revelation. First, we must see and hear, or we shall have nothing to tell; but when we have done so, we must be eager to bear our testimony. It must be personal: "Thou shalt be." It must be for Christ: "Thou shalt be his witness." It must be constant and all absorbing; we are to be this above all other things and to the exclusion of many other matters. Our witness must not be to a select few who will cheerfully receive us but to "all men" -...

Has listening without interjecting ourselves become a lost art? I finished listening to an audio version of "The Gifts of Imperfection" by Brene Brown. Yes I know she is secular, but I appreciate her research. In my opinion, her strength lies in identifying patterns of behavior by listening to thousands of people, which is way beyond my limited scope of humanity. At the end of the book, she describes the research process and writes this - "When I code data (analyze the stories), I go into deep researcher mode where my only focus is on accurately capturing what I heard in the stories. I don't think about how I would say something, only how they said it. I don't think about what an experience would mean to me , only what it meant to the person who told me about it." (pg. 129, italics mine) This requires a lot of self-discipline because Brown has to take herself out of the picture and objectively examine what others have said. This goes against our defaul...

I've written a review of  Broken Pieces and the God Who Mends Them: Schizophrenia Through a Mother's Eyes by   Simonetta Carr. It's a powerful book that the church needs because Christians can have serious mental illness, too. Read the review here .

"While truth is based on facts, it involves more than facts and does not end with them... This is why pure rationalism and scientism cannot lead us to truth; such approaches cannot tell us how to interpret, arrange, and discern the meaning of what we see, touch, feel, taste, and hear. Nor can they ensure that we will be ethical in the process. Pursuing truth requires more than knowing where the facts lead. It requires the honesty to actually follow them, regardless of who they implicate."  (pg. 74, my italics) I first read All That's Good  by Hannah Anderson last fall, and I'm rereading it with a group of women from church. We are now on Chapter 4, which is one of the best chapters of the book in my opinion, because Hannah addresses an area that I am deeply concerned about. I was in a situation many years ago where the truth did not lead to transparency but a cover up of the facts and a minimization of sin. Even though I was not the target, I was badly burned...

"He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32). If this is not a promise in form, it is in fact. Indeed, it is more than one promise, it is a conglomerate of promises. It is a mass of rubies, and emeralds, and diamonds, with a nugget of gold for their setting. It is a question which can never be answered so as to cause us any anxiety of heart. What can the LORD deny us after giving us Jesus? If we need all things in heaven and earth, He will grant them to us: for if there had been a limit anywhere, He would have kept back His own Son. What do I want today? I have only to ask for it. I may seek earnestly, but not as if I had to use pressure and extort an unwilling gift from the LORD's hand; for He will give freely. Of His own He gave us His own Son. Certainly no one would have proposed such a gift to Him. No one would have ventured to ask for it. It would have been too pr...