A New Identity in Christ

“The gospel is the best news we could ever hear. The gospel is about Jesus Christ and his power to transform our lives and relationships, communities, and ultimately, the nations. Through this gospel, we are freely given a new identity — an identity not based on race, social class, gender, a theological system, or a system of rules and regulations. Rather it is a new and perfect identity based solely on faith in Jesus — an identity that defines every aspect of our lives. We are now forgiven, righteous, adopted, accepted, free, and heirs to everything that belongs to Christ. So even our sin, weakness, and failures do not define who we are. Because of this good news, we no longer have to hide from our sin and pretend that we have it all together, for God knows and loves us as we are, not as we pretend to be.”

~ Neil H. Williams, Gospel Transformation, 2nd ed. (Jenkintown, Pa.; World Harvest Mission, 2006), i.

Look To Jesus For True Happiness & Joy

Would you like to be rid of this spiritual depression? The first thing you have to do is to say farewell now once and forever to your past. . . . Never look back at your sins again. Say, ‘It is finished, it is covered by the Blood of Christ.’ That is your first step. Take that and finish with yourself and all this talk about goodness, and look to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is only then that true happiness and joy are possible for you. What you need is not to make resolutions and to live a better life, to start fasting and sweating and praying. No! You just begin to say, ‘I rest my faith on Him alone, who died for my transgressions to atone.’”

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, page 35.
It's A Beautiful Gospel

Why Are You Cast Down?

This goes along with the last post...



Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.
Psalm 42 verses 5 and 11

Unhappy? Depressed? Preach To Yourself!

“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc.

Somebody is talking. Who is talking? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul?’ he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: ‘Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you.’…

The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: ‘Why art thou cast down’– what business have you to be disquieted?

You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: ‘Hope thou in God’– instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do.

Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: ‘I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God.’”

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965/2002), 20-1.

Your Hands

I love the beauty and simplicity of this song and the comfort it gives in a Sovereign God.

Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;

your walls are continually before me.

Isaiah 49:16

What Must We Do To Love?

Pharisees

Jesus' greatest enemy was a purity movement.

The Pharisees were a sect of Jewish leaders and teachers whose main goal was to purify Israel of its sin so that God would deliver Israel from Rome. In the law they saw the fundamental promise: "If you obey you will be blessed and dwell in the land." And so they took it upon themselves to be obedient and to enforce obedience across their small country.

The problem was that they thought they were the obedient ones.

Swallowing a Camel

The Pharisees were meticulous in following the law, while actually missing the grand intent of the law. It was not only to be pure and blameless, but also to be loving and good. That is why Jesus said that they would "strain a gnat, but swallow a camel." They neglected mercy and justice to their fellow countrymen.

But we ought not to just think that these men were more evil than any of us. They just had it in their mind that they were worthy of being blessed, and they tried to root out any people that would withhold the blessing from the nation—prostitutes, tax collectors, and "sinners."

The Fundamental Question

And that is the problem with all purity movements, whether they are doctrinal, methodological, or moral. The leaders see themselves as part of the solution, and act as referees in their culture—sitting in judgment of those who, in their minds, are withholding blessing from their nation. And so they have to be merciless and judgmental, because their fundamental question is "What must we do to be blessed?" instead of "God has already blessed us—what must we do to love?"

Dave Dorr

The Gospel of Everyday Life

“Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.” 1 Timothy 4:1-5

As Francis Schaeffer used to remind us, the devil rarely gives us the luxury of fighting on one front only. We see a monster over on one side wanting to devour us, and we back away in dread. But if we’re not paying attention, we can walk right into the jaws of the other monster waiting for us over on the other side. We often fight on two fronts at once.

Today we fight against materialism, especially the so-called Prosperity Gospel. But there is also the danger of asceticism, the super-spirituality that denies the goodness of God in all things. An almost endearingly absurd instance was Simeon the Stylite (c. 390-459), who lived in austerity for 36 years on top of a pillar, elevated above ordinary life. This “holiness” is attractive, in a way. It’s serious. But it’s also fraudulent. It tells an audacious lie about God and about us.

The truth is, everything created by God is good and is to be received by us gratefully. This beautiful truth includes marriage and sex and food and mowing the lawn and flying a kite and paying the bills and sharpening a pencil and sitting on the porch in the evening and playing Monopoly with the kids and laughing at hilarious jokes and setting up chairs at church, and so forth. There is so much divine goodness all around. To push it away, to be above it, would insult our gracious Creator.

Our very earthly human existence is where true holiness can thrive. How? By thanking the Lord for it moment by moment, and by applying the word of God to it moment by moment. It is written, “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

Not ultimate, but good. Good enough for God. Good enough for us too.

Ray Ortlund