Greater Intimacy

HT: Tim Challies

As Much As You Know...

HT: @DarrinPatrick

We're All Vulnerable

This is a good piece from Darryl Dash. I found this very relevant this week. in light of the story that broke this week about another Christian leader (one of my heroes) caught in an adultery scandal.

Back in the day, I was a big fan of Gordon MacDonald, author of Ordering Your Private World. I still remember the day that I heard that he had resigned due to a moral failure. I think I believed that only the bad guys did that sort of thing. It was the first time that I truly realized the good guys are susceptible too.

Sadly, it’s not unusual to hear heartbreaking stories of moral failure. MacDonald’s book Rebuilding Your Broken World, written years after his moral failure, helped shape my understanding around this issue.

The whole book is worth reading, but it may be useful to summarize some of the important lessons I learned. Here are some that stick out to me:

Broken worlds are common. “The Bible abounds with examples of men and women whose worlds crashed from self-inflicted causes, and their responses range within great extremes,” writes MacDonald. We shouldn't be surprised.

We’re all vulnerable. We need to confront three lies that we tell ourselves: Broken worlds are the exception, not the rule; a broken-world experience can never happen to me; and if my world breaks, then I can handle the results. We are all vulnerable, and the potential damage is greater than we can imagine.

We’re especially vulnerable when we think we aren’t. A German teenager landed an airplane in Red Square because the Soviets hadn’t prepared for the threat of a small plane. When we leave our hearts unguarded, we’re in severe danger.

We are especially vulnerable in the areas of our strengths. “The Bible characters never fell on their weak points but on their strong ones; unguarded strength is double weakness,” writes Oswald Chambers.

Secrets lead to death; repentance and truth-telling leads to life.Cover-up and self-deception keeps us in bondage until we are ready to name the evil and move towards repentance and healing. Churches can help people move from secrecy to light.

Take preventative steps. Adopt a repentant lifestyle. Practice spiritual disciplines. Cultivate key relationships. Resist the applause that belongs to Christ. Take time to have fun. Hold things loosely. Be filled with the Spirit of God.

Restoration is possible. “Either you believe in the capacity of Christ’s atonement to make you a new person, or you don’t. If you do, then start living like a forgiven person should live. And how is that done? By being a lot more quiet, humble, thankful, sensitive, and anxious to serve than you ever were before. Forgiven people basically live like that,” MacDonald says.

Restoration follows a process. For starters: be silent and withdraw; refuse to defend yourself; assume the ministry of the interior; walk through the pain rather than avoiding it.

Restoration requires others. “Ultimately, rebuilding broken worlds can never happen alone. It is a team effort, and it has to be accomplished in concert with those who can give grace and affirm progress,” says MacDonald. “The grace that helps to rebuild a broken world is something given: never deserved, never demanded, never self-induced.”

The lessons from this book have stuck with me for years. I've appreciated rereading them again this week. I pray we'll learn them well as those who walk with others who fail, and face the danger (or reality) of our own sins and failures.

Faith Defined

The Basics of Christianity by Paul Tripp:

If you had to define your faith with one sentence, what would your definition include?

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines faith as a "strong belief or trust in someone or something." The Bible defines faith as "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1)

Isn't it interesting how both of those definitions don't reference God in their initial description of what faith is or what faith does?

Now, ultimately, both of those sources end up associating faith with a belief in God. In its secondary definition, Merriam-Webster explains that faith is a "belief in the existence of God [or] strong religious feelings." Hebrews 11 goes on to reference God multiple times in the Bible's famous chapter on faith.

But here's the point I'm trying to make – every human being lives by faith, with or without God.

Christians believe, by faith, that there is a God and that eternity exists. Simultaneously, those who deny the existence of God and the reality of eternity do so by faith, too. Two totally contradicting messages, both derived from faith.

You may know atheists and agnostics, but you've never met a "faithless" person in your life. Every human being lives by a set of convictions and with a mentality of hope, despite a lack of factual and tangible evidence.

Regardless of religion profession, we all interpret what we see through the vehicle of the "unseen." It's impossible to exist in this life without faith of some capacity and variety.

THE BASICS OF CHRISTIANITY

If every person lives by faith, what makes the Christian unique? Here it is: Christians are different, not because they live by faith, but because of the object of their faith.

Naturally, the next question becomes: who is the object of the Christian faith? The answer, of course, is God. Christians live by faith in the existence of God. But what does that mean, and what does that look like?

With this Article, I'm going to try to define the basics of the Christian faith with one sentence. I’m going to leave Hebrews 11, the quintessential definition of Biblical faith, and use Scripture to interpret Scripture. My definition comes from Acts 17:22-31, when the Apostle Paul addresses the Areopagus.

So, fasten your seat belts - here's my sentence-long definition: true, biblical faith believes in the existence of God as Creator, Sovereign, and Savior, and results in a lifestyle of worshipful obedience, confident peace, and humble repentance.

Let me break down those six elements for you:

Creator / Worshipful Obedience

"The God who made the world and everything in it…" (v. 24)

Our world operates under a very simple organizational chart - God is Creator, and we are creatures. That means we belong to God, and whatever created things we've been given also belong to him. We don't get to define how life operates, because he designed life from the beginning!

True, biblical faith believes that God is Creator, so true, biblical faith never allows us to take life in our own hands. Faith won't allow us to treat people and possessions as if they belong to us. Faith won't allow us to believe we're smarter than God. True, biblical faith recognizes the organizational structure of the universe and allows us to obediently rest within God's wise boundaries as his creatures.

Abounding In Mercy

You, O Lord, Are the God of Those Who Repent 

O Lord and Ruler of the hosts of heaven,
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
and of all their righteous offspring:
You made the heavens and the earth,
with all their vast array.
All things quake with fear at your presence;
they tremble because of your power.
But your merciful promise is beyond all measure;
it surpasses all that our minds can fathom.
O Lord, you are full of compassion,
long-suffering, and abounding in mercy.
You hold back your hand;
you do not punish as we deserve.
In your great goodness, Lord,
you have promised forgiveness to sinners,
that they may repent of their sin and be saved.
And now, O Lord, I bend the knee of my heart,
and make my appeal, sure of your gracious goodness.
I have sinned, O Lord, I have sinned,
and I know my wickedness only too well.
Therefore I make this prayer to you:
Forgive me, Lord, forgive me.
Do not let me perish in my sin,
nor condemn me to the depths of the earth.
For you, O Lord, are the God of those who repent,
and in me you will show forth your goodness.
Unworthy as I am, you will save me,
in accordance with your great mercy,
and I will praise you without ceasing all the days of my life.
For all the powers of heaven sing your praises,
and yours is the glory to ages of ages. Amen.

- A Song of Penitence

HT: Trevin Wax

All Of Life Is....

From Darrin Patrick - All of Life is Repentance. He's right, of course.

Let me give you a simple description of repentance. When we are giving our hearts to sin, we are turning our backs to God. Repentance is a 180 degree-turn. We turn our backs to sin and give our hearts to God. You will be doing this the rest of your life.

Consider how Martin Luther began his ninety-five theses, which catalyzed the Protestant Reformation: When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said “Repent,” he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance. It’s the ongoing task of the Christian because when you become a Christian, you’re saved from sin’s power (its ultimate control of your heart) and sin’s penalty (its justly deserved eternal judgment), but not its presence (its eradication from your life).

One of the reasons it is so hard for us to deal with our remaining sin is that we think we are on our own. We approach God’s grace more like a bargain. Jesus takes care of two-thirds of the problem (sin’s power and penalty), but we’ve got to take care of our third (it’s presence). We rarely say this out loud, but that’s how we often function.

This mindset is so difficult to overcome because it’s a distortion of truth. We do have to take action against sin’s presence in our life. We’re in a constant battle. All of life is repentance. We’ve got to own our part. But we don’t fight against sin by relying on our own strength. We fight by turning to Jesus—over and over again.

It is Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, that reminds us that sin doesn’t have the upper hand, even when everything in our experience says otherwise. He reminds us that sin does not have as much power over us as we think. He reminds us that the full penalty of sin was paid for on the Cross. And he reminds us that there will be a day when sin’s presence will no longer affect us.

Remembrance is power in the fight against sin. Sin wants you to remember your failure. Repentance is remembering that Jesus’ victory is yours.

Fish Belly Repentance

Did Jonah really repent in the belly of the fish? I've always thought so........ but maybe not. Here's another view by Irene Sun in  Jonah and the Art of Being Broken

We teach our children many things. We teach them to be strong, brave, and swift, yet patient, kind, and gentle. Rarely do we teach them how to be broken. Yet brokenness before the Lord is the fount of these very blessings. Courage and meekness flows most generously from a broken and contrite heart.

A few years ago, I was a zealous collector of Jonah picture books from libraries all over Illinois. The obsession began when I was searching for a faithful rendition for my children. Among the few dozen books I acquired, nearly all of them claimed that Jonah prayed for forgiveness in the belly of the fish. I found this interpretation a little unsettling. In my readings of chapter two, taught by a few professors at my seminary, Jonah did not repent. He did not even acknowledge that he had done anything wrong.

My obsession with picture books soon turned into an obsession with the book of Jonah. I had the most difficult time understanding Jonah’s prayer. What am I missing? Why do I not see words related to sin and repentance in his prayer? Jonah was using verses and phrases from the Psalms. Yet somehow his prayer had a different flavor.

After much wrestling, I discovered where I had gone wrong. In order to understand Jonah’s prayer, I must first understand the meaning of repentance. Specifically, how repentance must arise from a broken and contrite heart. But Jonah’s heart was yet to be broken.

At the end of chapter one, Yahweh commanded a fish to swallow Jonah and delivered him from death. This came after Jonah disregarded Yahweh’s instruction to go to Nineveh, after he refused to pray when the sailors cried out to their gods, after he chose death over repentance, after he asked the sailors to commit murder by throwing him overboard. In other words, God’s rescue was pure mercy. The only thing Jonah deserved was judgment, yet Yahweh saved his life. In the belly of the fish, Jonah prayed to Yahweh, his God.

Woe Is Me

Jonah began his prayer by quoting the first verse of Psalm 120, which reads, “To Yahweh in my distress I called.” Jonah, however, changed the order of the words. He prayed, “I called from my distress to Yahweh” (Jonah 2:2). He moved Yahweh’s name to the end of the phrase and his own action to the front. Jonah was focused on himself and what he was doing. A subtle change, but it initiates the tone and pattern for the rest of the chapter.

In Jonah’s eyes, he was the one who approached Yahweh. Jonah emphasized his “call,” his “cry,” and his “voice.” He believed that Yahweh had heard and answered him, and he was right. Yet Jonah had neither answered nor heeded Yahweh’s words when he was commanded to go to Nineveh.

The longest portion of Jonah’s prayer was about his woes. He told his story from bits and pieces of David’s psalms of deliverance and laments (Psalms 5, 31, and 69). These were David’s prayers during seasons when he was pursued by his enemies. But in his recitation, Jonah omitted the praises of Yahweh’s steadfast love—the essential theme in these psalms.

Jonah accused God of throwing him into the deep. But had not Jonah asked the sailors to cast him overboard? Was he blaming God when he claimed that God’s waves and God’s billows passed over him? He felt that he was “driven away” from God’s sight. But was not Jonah the one who ran “from the presence of Yahweh” (1:2-3)?

Great Is My Faithfulness

Jonah concluded his woes with Yahweh’s deliverance (2:6). But he credited himself for God’s rescue: “I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple” (2:7)

Jonah set himself apart from idol worshipers, those who forsook “their hope of steadfast love.” In a way, he was right—the sailors were unlike Jonah. In chapter one, they prayed and worshiped Yahweh and made sacrifices on their wrecked, emptied ship. Here, in the belly of the fish, Jonah promised that he would offer sacrifices. Yet he continued to resist the command to go to Nineveh, because the Word of Yahweh had to come to Jonah—a second time (3:1).

Keep It Central

In this 6 minute interview, Francis Chan and David Platt discuss how easy it is to find our identity in our performance, work or ministry. And this is why repentance and ministry are inextricably linked, and what we can do about it. (From the Verge Network.)

Real Strength

Joyful Confession

"If you are truly trusting in Christ, you can’t confess a sin for which God has not provided forgiveness in Jesus.

Indeed, if you work at the discipline of confessing your sin, it should not lead to despair at all, but rather to rejoicing over the extent of God’s love to you in Christ. "

— Mark Dever and Michael Lawrence, It Is Well: Expositions on Substitutionary Atonement (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), page 42

Hearts More Deeply Gripped By Reality

"At the root of all our disobedience are particular ways in which we continue to seek control of our lives through systems of works-righteousness.

The way to progress as a Christian is to continually repent and uproot these systems the same way we become Christians, namely by the vivid depiction (and re-depiction) of Christ’s saving work for us, and the abandoning of self-trusting efforts to complete ourselves.

We must go back again and again to the gospel of Christ-crucified, so that our hearts are more deeply gripped by the reality of what he did and who we are in him,"

— Tim Keller, Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (New York, NY: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2003), page 61

HT: Of First Importance

Living Repentance

What does it mean to really repent? Was Martin Luther right when he said all of the Christian life is repentance? Read Where Hazy Repentance Goes to Die by Jonathan Parnell at Desiring God:

If a cloud of ambiguity hovers around our understanding of repentance, it might have to do with how we understand faith.

We’re reminded of Luther’s introductory words, unfolding into 94 other theses nailed to the door at Wittenberg: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said ‘Repent,’ he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.”

Our entire lives repentance? In one sense, we understand what he means. We should continually be turning from sin toward Jesus. The one great business of the Christian life is, as John Flavel puts it, to “preserve our souls from sin and maintain sweet communion with God.” In other words, we mortify and vivify, we put off and put on.

But our entire lives? Even if we sign off on this theologically, chances are that few of us make this the practical work of our Christian existence, at least not explicitly. Few of us would answer, if asked to describe what it means to be a Christian, “You repent all the time.” Sure, we repent. When we sin — when we areconvicted of our sin — we repent. But it’s probably a far cry from our “entire life.”

Luther says, though, that Jesus intends our entire lives to be about repentance. And he’s on to something. So what do we do?

If It’s All in Our Heads

My sense is that the measure of opaqueness we feel in Luther’s statement likely corresponds to how much we view the nature of faith as primarily intellectual rather than affectional. In other words, we’ll never grasp repentance as an all-of-life ordeal so long as we see faith as a mental adherence to facts about Jesus, even if we consciously agree that the facts are wonderful and glorious. Reason being, we can hold a lot of different facts in our minds that co-exist without the slightest trouble. If faith was just facts, if believing in Jesus meant theoretically agreeing with what he says about himself, then we won’t necessarily sense any problem with theoretically agreeing with several other things. We can simultaneously hold Jesus as Treasure in our minds while we dig for rubies somewhere else. The word for this kind of Christianity is nominal (in name only).

Mental agreement that Jesus is glorious is like affirming the statement that honey is sweet. As much as you might agree on paper, it still doesn’t stop you from eating other things. We can crunch on salty cashews without changing our minds about the honey. And we don’t necessarily feel like the cashews are something we need to forgo in order to eat more honey. To suggest we should would seem strange. If faith is all in our heads, repentance is still opaque.

Seeing Is Embracing

But faith is mainly affectional, not intellectual.

The Repentant Heart

From Trevin Wax at Kingdom People:

The heart of flesh is a repentant heart. And the repentant heart is a renouncing heart.

The repentant heart renounces any attempt to justify its sin; it humbly acknowledges sin’s existence and its sentence.

The repentant heart renounces self-sufficiency; it knows its beating is a gracious gift of God.

The repentant heart renounces hate and vengeance; it meets its enemy with unfeigned love and unreserved forgiveness.

The repentant heart renounces the evil one and all his deeds of death; it follows the chariot of a resurrected King who makes all things new.

The repentant heart renounces the fear of falling out of favor with others; it rests under the ever-falling favor of God.

The repentant heart renounces the darkness of its past; though shadows of sin may linger, it looks to the light that will not stop shining.

The repentant heart renounces fear as the way to obedience; it responds to the kindness of God who leads us away from sin.

The repentant heart renounces self-congratulation for righteous deeds; it sees sinful traces even in the best moments and directs all glory to God for any spiritual growth.

The repentant heart renounces a spirit of condemnation; the grace that flows in is the grace that flows out.

The repentant heart renounces the world’s marching orders; its rhythm is to the beat of a different Drummer.

The repentant heart renounces the stepladder of superiority; looking up to God for salvation keeps it from looking down on anyone else.

The repentant heart is a renouncing heart.

Joy-Based Repentance

"In fear-based repentance, we don’t learn to hate the sin for itself, and it doesn’t lose its attractive power. We learn only to refrain from it for our own sake.

But when we rejoice over God’s sacrificial, suffering love for us — seeing what it cost him to save us from 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-based repentance makes us hate the sin. "

— Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods  (New York, NY: Penguin, 2009), page 172

HT Of First Importance

Pull Your Sorry Self Across the Line

From Jared Wilson - Sanctifying Success is the Lord’s 

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  – 1 Thessalonians 5:23

Not a single one of us is a perfect repenter. And not a single one of us ever will be. I do believe we cooperate in the work of our sanctification, working out what God has worked in (Phil. 2:12-13), striving to lay hold of the holiness with which God has already laid hold of us (Phil. 3:12), holding true to what we’ve already attained (Phil. 3:16), but the power and the success of sanctification must be the Lord’s alone, if only because only he sees all we need cleansing from.

It is a mistake to think that as we progress in sanctification we have less sin to address. We walk through victories, successions of freedoms, but my experience has been that the further into Christ’s righteousness I press, the more of my own unworthiness I see, not the less. And even as the Spirit bears more and more fruit in my life, even as I learn to trust more and more, when I do finally cross that heavenly finish line, there will nevertheless still be sins unrepented, especially among the sins I don’t even remember or don’t even see. And I will pull my sorry self across that line, some stupid sin still entangled around my ankle, and I will look up to see Christ the Judge standing over me, looking down, considering my pitiful soul. And do you know what he will say? “Well done.”

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.– Jude 1:24-25

My sorry self says amen and thank the Lord for this kind of grace! 

Signs of Repentance

Helpful list from From Jared Wilson - Here are 12 signs we have a genuinely repentant heart:

1. We name our sin as sin and do not spin it or excuse it, and further, we demonstrate “godly sorrow,” which is to say, a grief chiefly about the sin itself, not just a grief about being caught or having to deal with the consequences of sin.

2. We actually confessed before we were caught or the circumstantial consequences of our sin caught up with us.

3. If found out, we confess immediately or very soon after and “come clean,” rather than having to have the full truth pulled from us. Real repentance is typically accompanied by transparency.

4. We have a willingness and eagerness to make amends. We will do whatever it takes to make things right and to demonstrate we have changed.

5. We are patient with those we’ve hurt or victimized, spending as much time as is required listening to them without jumping to defend ourselves.

6. We are patient with those we’ve hurt or victimized as they process their hurt, and we don’t pressure them or “guilt” them into forgiving us.

7. We are willing to confess our sin even in the face of serious consequences (including undergoing church discipline, having to go to jail, or having a spouse leave us).

8. We may grieve the consequences of our sin but we do not bristle under them or resent them. We understand that sometimes our sin causes great damage to others that is not healed in the short term (or perhaps ever).

9. If our sin involves addiction or a pattern of behavior, we do not neglect to seek help with a counselor, a solid twelve-step program, or even a rehabilitation center.

10. We don’t resent accountability, pastoral rebuke, or church discipline.

11. We seek our comfort in the grace of God in Jesus Christ, not simply in being free of the consequences of our sin.

12. We are humble and teachable.

More at the link.

Melted Hearts

Only when we turn away from looking at our sin to look at the face of God, to find his pardoning grace, do we begin to repent. Only by seeing that there is grace and forgiveness with him would we ever dare to repent and thus return to the fellowship and presence of the Father.… Only when grace appears on the horizon offering forgiveness will the sunshine of the love of God melt our hearts and draw us back to him. 

                 -Sinclair Ferugson in You Can Change

HT: Rick Ianniello, Of First Importance

Is Your Heart Far From God?

Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test! (2 Corinthians 13:5, ESV)

Scripture says we should "examine" ourselves. From Charisma Magazine, here's a quick test on the status of your heart before God- and how to get back where you belong.

The prodigal son didn't end up among the pigs the day he left his father's house; he went through a gradual process of decline (see Luke 15:11-15). So it is with us. If the enemy presented the end with the first temptation, it would be easy to resist! But usually the departure from grace is so subtle that even leaders take the bait.

The warning signs are visible long before we fully embrace sin. One of the first is that we allow other people or things to take the place in our hearts that belongs only to God.

Preferring any earthly thing over God is a clear sign that our hearts have wandered. Even the spiritually mature are in danger of allowing what is visible to usurp the place of the eternal, invisible God.

The result is that we become lukewarm in our pursuit of God. Complacency sets in. We compare ourselves to the standard of others rather than to the standard of the Word and justify what we know is compromise.

We begin to live "a form of godliness," being outwardly religious but having no power in our lives (2 Tim. 3:5, KJV). Self then takes the throne (see vv. 2-4). We are no longer able to express the pure love God desires and are often judgmental and critical of others. Ultimately, like the prodigal son squandering his inheritance, we end up on the path to sin and spiritual death.

If your heart has wandered, recognizing your condition and crying out for God's help is the first step back into His empowering grace. Even your failure can be a stepping stone to a higher place spiritually if you come to see that your flesh can't be trusted. Understanding your own weakness is a key to releasing God's power on your behalf.

Evidences You Are Living in Gospel Community

From Tim Brister - Evidences your church family is a gospel community: You know you're living in a gospel community when:

• believers practice confession instead of trying to make an impression

• people are defined by a lifestyle of repenting rather than pretending

• you embrace truth at all costs, not agreeing for each others approval

• light exposes & wounds and love covers & heals – both/and not either/or

• people are happy to be holy not content to be comfortable

• you own your mess because of His mercy instead of hiding them because of your shame

• functional saviors & heart idolatry are lovingly confronted & challenged by Christ’s reign & rule

• unbelieving sinners & believing sinners together look away from themselves & look to Jesus

• the pleasure of God in Christ to save you liberates you to passionately serve others

• hospitality is given to those on the margins & those not like you are welcome in your world

• individual preferences take a back seat to community purposes of loving God and neighbor

How do you (we) measure up?

Not That Complicated...

From Jim Wright at Crossroad Junction:

Grace is the means – God extends His undeserved mercy, forgiveness and truth.
Repentance is the result – I accept, submit and change.
Separate grace from repentance, and we pervert grace.
Separate repentance from grace, and we pervert repentance.
Don’t be bamboozled.
It’s really not that complicated…