“In fear-based repentance, we don’t learn to hate the sin for itself, and it doesn’t lose it’s attractive power. We learn only to refrain from it for our own sake. But when we rejoice over God’s sacraficial, suffering love for us – seeing what it cost him to save us fom sin – we learn to hate the sin for what it is. We see what the sin cost God. What most assures us of God’s unconditional love (Jesus’s costly death) is what most convicts us of the evil of sin. Fear-based repentance makes us hate ourselves. Joy-bases repentance makes us hate the sin.”
- Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2009), 172.
“At any given moment, each of us is a mixed bag of motives, the known and the unknown. In the end, God understands we all are pretty messed up but not outside the realm of his ability to save.”
“Maybe God’s idea of my salvation trumps the version I am too willing to settle for. Uncovering your true reasons for wanting God and learning God’s real purpose for wanting you are a couple of revelations you need to have in order to get down heaven’s road. The first requires a brutal self-honesty, and the second an elastic head and heart, both of which you sometimes need a little help acquiring.”
-from the “Real Introduction” to Jim Palmer’s Divine Nobodies
I will be accused of a serious lack of good news, I’m sure, so listen. At the moment I am winning, Jesus is with me. At the moment I am losing, Jesus is with me and guarantees that I will get up and fight on. At the moment I am confused, wounded and despairing, Jesus is with me. I never, ever lose the brokenness. I fight, and sometimes I prevail, but more and more of my screwed up, messed up life erupts. Each battle has the potential to be the last, but because I belong to one whose resurrection guarantees that I will arrive safely home in a new body and a new creation, I miraculously, amazingly, find myself continuing to believe, continuing to move forward, till Jesus picks us up and takes us home.
The man who has faith is the man who is no longer looking at himself, and no longer looking to himself. He no longer looks at anything he once was. He does not look at what he is now. He does not [even] look at what he hopes to be as the result of his own efforts. He looks entirely to the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work, and he rests on that alone. He has ceased to say, ‘Ah yes, I have committed terrible sins but I have done this and that…’ He stops saying that. If he goes on saying that, he has not got faith… Faith speaks in an entirely different manner and makes a man say, ‘Yes, I have sinned grievously, I have lived a life of sin… yet I know that I am a child of God because I am not resting on any righteousness of my own; my righteousness is in Jesus Christ, and God has put that to my account.’
If you are in the Nashville area this Wednesday and can make the time you should consider seeing Tim Keller speak on The Prodigal God at Christ Presbyterian. Here’s the blurb :
Newsweek has called him a “C.S.Lewis for the twenty-first century”, and his latest book is based on Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son. In this familiar story, Keller challenges both devout Christians and skeptics to see Christianity in a whole new way as Jesus reveals God’s prodigal grace toward both the irreligious and the moralistic. “I have seen more people encouraged, enlightened, and helped by this passage when I explained the true meaning of it, than by any other text.”
And drop me a line if you’re going. I plan on being there.
I know, the Advent season has passed. But when you don’t post for over 3 months I think you deserve a little leeway.
We typically do Advent at church but this year we decided to do it as a family at home as well. And even though we have done it at church I’m still kind of a noob about the whole thing. Comes from growing up in the CofC where we’re anti any semblance of liturgy. But anyway, I think we’ll do it again. It was good to be able to have the kids participate in the lighting of the candles and good to have time to explain things. It was good for me as well. Perhaps I’m getting old but I’m wanting some rhythm to mark the time by.
I’ll leave you with this song. It was going through my head all during Advent and needs to be shared. Not only has my Deliverer come but he will come again. There’s a lot of hope in that.
Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do. Inigo Montoya: What’s that? Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.
Like poor Westley, I think our blog is on the verge of being miscategorized. But there may still be some life left in it yet. All we need now is a chocolate-coated miracle pill…
I’d like to say that we were on sabbatical or fasting technology or some such spiritual gobbledygook as that. I can’t speak for the others, but the truth is that I just had nothing to say. Well, that I could put on the blog anyway. There were some choice things I could have said but discretion and all that.
What about 2009? How about an honest I don’t know? I think the blogging part of my brain(it’s in there, really) has atrophied and I’ll need to figure out how to use it again. I want to keep it up. I think it’s good for me. But we’ll see what the future holds.
After Jenn’s post yesterday, I get the easy part of posting a few pics. From a beautiful baby to a beautiful young girl. It’s hard to believe she’s grown up so much.
