Biggest Problem

From Tim Challies

Our Own Work

"The heart is so deceitful that it becomes us to examine ourselves with all carefulness, lest at the end of life we shall find that whilst we appeared to be doing God’s work, we were really doing our own; and that whilst our friends gave us credit for great religious devotion, we were really borne along by a vain, proud, and unworthy purpose, which robbed out noblest service of all value in the sight of eternity."

--F. B. Meyer, The Directory of the Devout Life (1904), 151

HT Dane Ortlund

Worst Enemy

From Sermon Quotes

An Ax to the Root

"It is interesting to ponder for a moment both the order of the Ten Commandments and Jesus' famous sermon.  While it is certainly the case that all the sins warned against in the Decalogue are serious, there does seem to be a bit of a hierarchy to them. Murder is a pretty big deal - certainly a bigger deal than coveting your neighbors' donkey. And yet, that is not the first or second or even the third commandment. It's not even the first 'You shall not.' The warning against strange gods is the first of those. Both the greatest commandment and the Sermon on the Mount do not present things like murder as root sins. The true roots of sin, the roots that grow into actions like murder, are seeded within the mind, which is where idolatry always begins.

No idol is constructed in the act of murder. Rather, the murder is, at its end, and offering to an idol. the real idol is the enlarged anger within us, and it forms through our willingness to sustain an idea about our righteousness, and therefore an idea about ourselves.... The great evil of murder, then is the fruit of the idolatry that is first an idea, and the idea is almost always about the self."

    - Elizabeth Scalia in  Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life., pages 31-32
    (italics in the original)

Pre-Existing Condition

Aren't you glad Jesus doesn't really take that attitude.  Sin is a "pre-existing" condition that we all have, and He removes it by His grace.

Revelation of Me

Last week I fasted one day. Nothing spectacular, just skipping two meals.  I was miserable!

I had a headache. My stomach was growling. The work day was going so slow.  I was grumpy. I was irritable. Once again I thought, as I do every time I fast: "I hate fasting, because fasting makes me grumpy."

Then I had a revelation.

Fasting does not make me grumpy - Fasting reveals that I AM grumpy! Fasting uncovers the real me, the irritable grumpy true me, the essential me when un-medicated by food.  Fasting uncovers my mask of niceness, my facade of self-control. Inside, under that facade, I am a selfish mess!

I so need Jesus!  Maybe you do too.
  

Tell Me the Old, Old Story

Why we need to hear it over, and over, and over, and over...

"The hope in hearing the old, good news is that it would perpetually break new ground in our lives. Our hearts are like a jungle. There is untamed wilderness and darkness that has not yet been brought, as it were, under the rule of the One who has laid claim to it all.

We need to hear the gospel again and again so that the old, good news of Jesus Christ would reach into these unchartered territoties of our lives and fly the flag of its dominion. This is how we are "being saved." This is what it means to be overcome by the gospel."

From Jonathan Parnell at Desiring God