Disappointed and Disillusioned

Are you disappointed in your relationship with Christ? Are you disillusioned by the fact that you don’t feel the presence of God near you? Most of have been there. Many have made an attempt at diagnosing why we are there. But how do you overcome your disappointment? How do you change your outlook to become enamored by Christ and encouraged in your fellowship with him? That is not an easy question to answer. Because it is so personal, I have found that it is a process worked out by God himself in our lives that is very difficult to articulate. However, I found the following quotes from Paul Tripp’s new book Broken Down House very helpful. I pray that you will too. You can follow more quotes from BD House on Twitter.

BDHouse

“Here is a sad truth: Celebrating grace is an act of war. The worship of God doesn’t come naturally to sinners like you and me.”

“It doesn’t take long for us to imagine that perhaps life really can be found apart from Christ.”

“We do the unthinkable: we take grace for granted and stop celebrating the one thing in life that should amaze us for eternity.”

“We have to be committed to fighting for our hearts. We have to remind ourselves daily how quickly we get distracted, seduced, & hooked.”

“We need to warn ourselves again and again against disappointment and the danger of looking for life where life cannot be found.”

There is no easy answer here. Tripp describes grace as an act of war. I think what he means is that living in the grace of God and overcoming despair is hard work. It takes commitment, even when the feeling of God’s presence is absent. It takes lectures and warnings to ourselves in which we tell ourselves the truth about who we are, who God is and what He has done. And we wait, repeating the same steps over and over again, trusting that God in His Providence is using our despair to finish the work he began in us.

Blessings, Mark

Working It Out/Living It Out

Have you ever wondered about Philippians 2:12, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling”? Have you ever asked yourself, what does that mean, what does that look like, what is the purpose and/or reason? I have. It can be a perplexing statement, but it is an instructive one. To understand the statement it is important to put it in its context.

In chapter one Paul begins to talk about his resolve to continue in life in order to continue ministering to the churches. His one request of the Philippians is that they conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the gospel (1:27). He then gives them his reasons, the ultimate of which is that “...to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for his sake...” (1:29). He then begins to talk about all the benefits found in the Christian faith: encouragement, consolation or comfort, fellowship, affection and compassion. He then says, if you have these things in Christ, and you do, then live like it; be unified; look out for one another; be selfless. The sum of this would be that Christians, who have been granted the privilege of suffering with Christ will love one another even to the point of dying for one another.

Having said this, he gives them a perfect example and shows them how Christ subjected himself to humiliation in order to serve others. He faced and went through the miseries of this life, including a cruel death, in order to deal compassionately with us. As a result God exalted him. God lifted him up above all others in stature and worth and made him Lord over all with the power to subdue the nations and one day judge all people. This is our example. It has been granted to us to share in that humiliation. So it has also been granted to us to share in that exaltation. Christ faced his humiliation with tears and sweat drops of blood, but through it he was exalted. Through his selflessness he became the highest sovereign.

When Paul says that we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling he is saying to us, abandon your perceived rights to comfort, privilege, and respect, and give yourself over to the humiliation of Christ, which comes inherently when you live for others to save them from hell. Live out the privilege of your salvation, the privilege of suffering with Christ. It will be no easy thing, and so you must do it with great fear and trembling, weeping through the sorrow that you must surely endure for the sake of Christ and others.

This is what it mean to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. You are not earning something, you are living something out and doing so is a fearsome thing. But, oh the reward, to share in his exaltation, his resurrection. This is a gift worth looking forward to, even through tears.

Heavenly Petitions

Is it ever wrong to ask God for something? I think most of us wonder about this from time to time. We think to ourselves, "my problem/need/desire can't be important enough to bother the creator and ruler of the world over." In fact, I think there is a strong tendency in the human heart to abstain from prayers of petition because such prayers seem to reflect a weakness on our part. Well, what about that? In fact that is the point of prayers of petition; they do indeed reflect our weakness, because we are weak. Without him we can do nothing. He holds all things together. These are biblical truths that we give lip service to, but our pride in not taking our petitions to God exposes the lie in our affirmation of these truths.

What about the idea that God's too big and my petition is too small? Does that carry weight? Well, let's see: he's the God who clothes the lilies of the field which are here today and gone tomorrow; he's the God who knows when a single sparrow falls from the sky; he's the God who's interested enough in you to count the exact number of the hairs on your head. No, I don't think the "God's too big, my petitions are too small" argument carries any weight.

But, if you are still hesitant to take all your cares to the throne of God, let me give you one care that you should have no doubt about your need for help in addressing and God's interest in hearing and responding to it. That care is the condition of your heart. You are powerless to improve it, you are prone to do harm to it, and only God can repair and keep it. What is more, God wants to repair and keep it. So, if you are remiss to take your petitions to God, leave this one out of your list of "I'll take care of that myself", and rush to his throne, and lay it at his, and by the power of Christ's shed blood he will heal your heart and keep it always fixed upon him. At least cast that care on him.