Tried With Fire

You have real and obvious limits to your wisdom, power, and righteousness. But your heavenly Father is infinite in wisdom, and infinite in power, and is the only source of true righteousness. God has no boundaries, edges, or limitations. In his authority, he bows to no one. You are riddled with imperfections, but God is perfect in every way. Therefore, the key to rest is not in continually lying to yourself in a futile effort to convince yourself you are strong. No, it is when you humbly embrace your foolishness, weakness, and sin that you are in the best position to know peace of heart and to live productively in this broken-down house. So let your smallness drive you to the One who alone is great. There you will experience that he is not only great in wisdom, power, and holiness, He is great in grace, and he will give you what you need. It is not your job to be mighty, not is it within your capacity. That role is reserved for God alone....

In this broken world you need a place to run for comfort, encouragement, motivation, strength, and rest. There is no better place to run than into the arms of the One who reigns over it all for your sake. No, you won't always understand. Yes, there will be moments when life will seem overwhelmingly difficult. Sure, you will wonder why he has chosen you to go through what you are enduring when the person next to you seems to have it so easy. And there will be times when you are tempted to question his wisdom and love. But in those moments, determine to do this one thing. Determine to run to him and not from him. Run to him with your questions, doubts, confusion, and fear. He loves you; he will not turn you away. He wants you to know rest. This is precisely what he has told you again and again in his Word - that he is in control, so that in those moments when you are confronted with your lack of control, or when life seems out of control, you would know pea...

There is one final thing you need to know in order to understand the grace that has been bestowed on you: you are loved by a dissatisfied Redeemer. He will not rest from his work of grace until every last microbe of sin has been completely eradicated from every last cell of every last one of his children. And so he wars against sin on our behalf. We are never alone in our struggle for a single moment. We never have to deal with the temptations of a situation or relationship by ourselves. He is absolutely resolute in his determination that every one of his children will experience the complete spoils of the victory he gained over sin and death through his crucifixion and resurrection. You are blessed every day by his dissatisfaction. You are blessed every day that he does not grow discouraged, tired, or weary. You are blessed every day that he rules over all things for your sake. You are blessed every day that to cease from any of this he would have to deny himself, an...

God's anger is the anger of grace. It is not the violent anger of unbridled fury. God's anger always works to right what is wrong. That is what grace does. This gracious anger has two sides to it: justice and mercy. In the gracious anger of justice, God works to punish wrong, but he does even more… He will not rest until evil is no more and justice and righteousness reign forever and ever! There is also another side to his gracious anger. It is the anger of mercy. In mercy he works to convict … he works to forgive … he works to empower … he works to deliver … until every microbe of sin is completely eradicated from every cell of the heart of every one of his children. Where do we see both sides of God's anger coming together in one moment? On that hill outside the city gate where Jesus hung. That is where we see justice and mercy kiss. As he hung there, Jesus bore the full weight of the justice of God's anger. He paid the penalty our sin required. And on the c...

The Bible is not a higher-plane tome about some mystical life of spiritual devotion. It does not teach blissful separation from the brokenness of everyday life. No, the Bible is a book about this world. It is a gritty, honest book… In both its diagnoses and its descriptions, the Bible is honest about life in a fallen world. This honesty is a sign of God's love…. In being honest, the Bible welcomes you to be honest as well. In its refusal to minimize, diminish, or deny the harsh realities of this broken-down house, the Bible calls us to face the facts as well. Broken-Down House , Paul David Tripp, Shepherd Press, 2009, pp. 26, 29-30.

I'm sharing a quote from Lost in the Middle: Midlife and the Grace of God by Paul Tripp at Out of the Ordinary  today. It seemed a fitting way to wrap up last month's series on midlife. Stop for a moment and scan your midlife disappointments, regrets, and fears. Ask yourself what you have been hoping in. What is really worth celebrating? What is really worth mourning? Force yourself to use the values of eternity as your measuring tool for the here and now. Let eternity argue with the values of the surrounding culture, which says life is all about youth, appearance, success, material ease, power, and control… Read more here .

It's the last day of 2012. God has been good every day this year and good in ways that go far beyond material blessings. Worry still creeps in tempting me to doubt His steadfast love, but by His grace, I am determined to remember past Ebenezers, trust Providence for the present, and look forward to eternity. Life is very different from what I imagined it would be. In some ways it is harder and in other ways so much better. But if Christ died to only give us our "best life now", we would be the most pitiful people on earth so I ain't buying what you're selling,  Mr. Osteen. (1. Cor. 15:19) Because of the gospel, we have something awaiting us that will more than make up for every earthly loss. So Ms. Worry, here's a good dose of eternity to send you packing: They don't sing, "You are worthy to open the scroll, because you always gave your children everything they ever asked for. You gave them nice houses and good jobs; you gave them good children, a...

I'm about 3/4 of the way through Lost in the Middle: Midlife and the Grace of God by Paul Tripp.  This is the second book I've read by Tripp and it's very good and very convicting an d not just for the middle-aged. This quote is taken from the chapter 7  Painful Faith: God's Story and Suffering which references 1 Peter 1. What are trials? They are God's boiling pot. When we came to Christ we are dross corrupted Christians. We are carrying around inherent corruptions inside of us that rob us of our strength and beauty. So God, in the grandeur and faithfulness of redemptive love, boils us. The difficulties that come our way are not a sign of his unfaithfulness or inattention. No they are an indication of his love. He knows that we are not yet what we were meant to be.  He has dug us out of the mine, but we need to be refined. Now why is this so hard for us to deal with? I am convinced it is because we tend to live with a destination mentality. We want life to...

In this book. Paul David Tripp deals honestly with the unrealistic expectations we bring to marriage and how to face reality armed with the gospel. This is not a book about behavior modification - such as do (fill in the blank) to get the desired change in your spouse and you'll have a new marriage in a week. Rather Tripp sees the goal of marriage bigger than marriage itself -  our sanctification and holiness. Sanctificaion is probably not the first thing that comes to mind for most couples. In the glow of early marital bliss, one doesn't view one's spouse as a person still battling indwelling sin, let alone have a correct assessment of one's self. But it's only a matter of time before these struggles (yes, even as believers!) manifest themselves. However, being brought face-to-face with our condition is nothing less than the grace of God. He has orchestrated every conflict as a means to rescue us from self-absorption and personal kingdom building. God's goa...

I'm about two-thirds through What Did You Expect? by Paul Tripp. It's been a very good read but oft-times painful as it's like reading the coroner's report on my marriage. He systematically dismantles the unrealistic expectations we bring into marriage with examples that are closer to home than I would like. Looking back, we had a pretty meager understanding of the gospel.  We were pathetically blind to the indwelling sin that remained in our lives. Hence we had the notion that I'm different;  he's different . God was doing something  special  in our relationship so somehow we were exempt from the normal failings of self absorption which plagued everyone else. We had done courtship "right" so the reward was a happy marriage. It was to be the happiest place on earth, like Disney World but spiritual of course, where the process of sanctification magically happened by some mystical hand waving of the Holy Spirit without effort, pain, and tears. Ri...

Paul Tripp - On how he's changed through marriage from Crossway on Vimeo . ht: Take Your Vitamin Z via Thirsty Theologian I wished I had heard these tough words when I was young. But even if I had, would I have believed it? Maybe but probably not because of my faulty views regarding the depravity of mankind and the necessary and often painful process of progressive sanctification. This leads me to wonder if most of my wrong ideas about myself and relationships can be traced back to a wrong understanding of the gospel. But when you think about it, if we get the gospel wrong, we get everything wrong.