Living With Integrity

“There's this idea that to live out of conformity with how I feel is hypocrisy; but that's a wrong definition of hypocrisy, To live out of conformity to what I believe is hypocrisy. To live in conformity with what I believe, in spite of what I feel, isn't hypocrisy; it's integrity.”

    - Erik Thoennes, quoted in Has 'Authenticity' Trumped Holiness?

BTW - This is a very good article which I highly recommend.

Change of Perspective

“Does anyone truly understand the message of the cross apart from brokenness, contrition, repentance, and faith? To repeat rather mechanically the nature of the transaction that Christians think took place at Golgotha is one thing; to look at God and his holiness, and people and their sin, from the perspective of the cross, is life-changing.”

— D. A. Carson The Cross and Christian Ministry 
(Grand Rapids, Mi.: Baker Books, 2003), 64

Hat Tip: Of First Importance

Monday Twitter Update

From my Twitter feed last week:

RT @renovatuspastor: Greater revelation of the love of God is always correlative to a greater revelation of my own brokenness.

RT @PassionNetwork: There's nothing more cutting edge than God - always at the forefront of innovation and imagination

Nothing smells worse than pride. Nothing smells better than grace. Good thing there's grace for stinky people like me. RT @JustinBuzzard

RT @PassionNetwork: Never, ever, ever, ever believe you will amount to nothing. In God you are already a somebody with HUGE potential

"Busyness-the blasphemous anxiety of doing God's work for him" Hilary of Tours RT @DarrinPatrick

RT @PassionNetwork: God may choose to showcase His power on the stage of your weakness.

When you mess up badly, God sees it as a good starting point for connecting again...RT @PassionNetworkRT 

@renovatuspastor: Open frailty attracts the presence of God and brings healing to others. Don't conceal yours.

Just A Reminder....

...like me and you!

Hope to the Broken

“The life of Jesus offers hope to the broken, to those who recognize their inability to keep God’s law, and to those who are frustrated with their falling and failings. The gospel is the life of Jesus for sinners. His righteousness is our righteousness, and this gives us hope and confidence before God. Here the broken find encouragement, for in Christ we are righteous.”

— Joe Thorn, Note To Self
(Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2011), 31

Hat Tip: Of First Importance

Contemplation of the Cross

Martin Luther on the True Contemplation of the Cross

"Let us meditate a moment on the passion of Christ....true contemplation is that in which the heart is crushed and the conscience smitten....You must be overwhelmed by the frightful wrath of God who so hated sin that he spared not his only begotten Son. What can the sinner expect if the beloved Son was so afflicted? It must be an inexpressible and unendurable yearning that causes God’s Son himself so to suffer. Ponder this and you will tremble, and the more you ponder, the deeper you will tremble.

The whole value of the meditation of the suffering of Christ lies in this, that man should come to the knowledge of himself and sink and tremble. If you are so hardened that you do not tremble, then you have reason to tremble. Pray to God that he may soften your heart and make fruitful your mediation upon the suffering of Christ, for we ourselves are incapable of proper reflection unless God instill it."

Hat Tip:- Desiring God

CRUX SOLA EST NOSTRIA THEOLOGICA!
 

The Very Worst Missionary? I Think Not!

Want to read some spiritual writing with a very unique style that will make you laugh, while sometimes hitting you in the gut through the humor? If so, then check out Jamie the Very Worst Missionary. I love the title! If I was a missionary I'd steal it from her. Jamie and her husband are missionaries in Costa Rica. Here's a sample of her stuff:

“Sometimes”, I say to God, ”I just want it to be how it was. Ya know?”

And God says, gently, as always, “Oh, Baby Girl… You’ve got it all wrong.”

And then He reminds me of what I already know, which is that I have been Restored… and that Restoration is for the broken.

In my foolishness, I plead to God to take away the broken parts, make it like it was, like none of this ever happened. But it seems, in my haste to forget life’s biggest challenges, I would erase all of the best parts of the story. Because where I see a heart, broken and aching for the poor, He sees a heart, salvaged from materialism, and Restored to a better condition. And where I see a marriage, broken by every kind of selfishness, He sees a couple, raised from the brink of death, and Restored to a better place. And where I see all the scars left by living a dirty, messed up life, He sees that what was once broken is now made whole. Our scars are simply evidence of what has been Restored. They get to tell the Story of where our lives have been touched by God.

Why would you erase”, He asks me, “all the best parts of the Story?”

“I don't know. I just wanted it to be how it was.”

“Ah, but when you tell the Story how it is…. we’re Both in it.”

And then I feel silly that after all these years with God by my side, I'm still getting it all wrong.

I don't know, Jamie, I think you are getting a lot of it right.

  

All of It, All of Me

"My humanity, my sin, it's all me.  And I need Jesus to love me like I really am: brokenness, wounds, sins, addictions, lies, death, fear...all of it.  Take all of it, Lord Jesus.  If I don't present this broken, messed-up person to Jesus, my faith is dishonest, and my understanding of faith will become a way of continuing the ruse and pretense of being good."

     - Michael Spencer, Mere Churchianity, page 149

Our Weakness Makes God Happy

"How essential is it for us to be broken if Christ is going to be our strength?  When I am weak, I am strong.  Not 'when I am cured' or 'when I am successful' or 'when I am a good Christian,' but 'when I am weak.'  The human experience of weakness is God's blueprint for calling attention to the supremacy of his son.  When miserably failing people continue to belong to, believe in, and worship Jesus, God is happy."

             - Michael Spencer, Mere Churchianity, page 145

More on Brokenness

Continuing the thought from the earlier post about brokeness, I also like these words from David Paul Dorr

"I have always thought of brokenness with a good amount of dread.

My assumption is that I work, but God has to break me in order for me to really be the person that He wants me to be. Can you spot the false assumption? I think I work.

When something is broken it doesn’t work. The experience of “being broken” is not where God comes in and stops us from working. It’s the experience of realizing that we just don’t work. We are already broken, but we are pretending that we are functional.

And this is a freeing thought. Whatever God might bring into our lives that creates the feeling of brokenness is something that we are using to pretend that we are not broken. It might be our reputation, or our good looks, or intelligence, or a hundred different things. We don’t need to be broken, we just need to better understand that we just don’t work apart from God.

But this realization cannot be gained intellectually, it must be experienced. Because one of our greatest enemies is our capacity to pretend — acting that we can have life apart from Jesus. And God is a loving Father. If we are truly His, He will not let us wear the mask for long. Because He wants to give us Himself, which is the only thing that can fix broken things."

 Amen!

Jesus Uses Broken People (I Qualify)

Notice the irony in this picture? Quite a mix of brokenness and addictions isn't it - combined with a message on hope for the future.

I like what Paul Wilkinson said about the message of this sign.

"Jesus can do more with broken people than he can with people who have it all together. The addicted, the abused, the abusers, the impoverished, the homeless, the users, the people with no self image, the people dealing with temptation, the people on the brink of despair; these are all the people who can be America’s hope for the future.

The future never looked as bright as when you know you’ve reached bottom and there’s nowhere lower down you can go. I hope it was a great sermon!"

Quote from :Blessed Are The Broken: Our Hope for the Future « Thinking Out Loud