I hear of others just outside of my circle who are afflicted as well. Loss of work and home, debilitating disease, dementia, depression, cancer and suicide are among the sufferings of the people who know people I know.

What makes these problems more heartbreaking is that many of those suffering these things don’t know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. They don’t know that God’s grace is sufficient to get them through their struggles (2 Cor. 12:9).

Poetry rarely appeals to me, but this poem by John Piper touches something in me that prose just doesn’t reach. Read it three times and then meditate on the words of Jesus, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

What is God’s sovereign grace?

Not grace to bar what is not bliss
Nor flight from all distress but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain
And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

– John Piper

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/not-grace-to-bar-what-is-not-bliss

Even More Linkin!

Linking to noteworthy articles from other blogs and websites.

As everything, He became nothing so that you, as nothing, could have everything. You bring nothing to the table except the unrighteousness that makes Christ’s righteousness necessary.

If Jesus is to remain “the reason for the season,” then churches must be the place continually pointing to Him, especially in our preaching. We must take caution that our Christmas programs, which many times are designed to draw unbelievers, are not so secularized that we obscure the message we are trying to convey.

1. Define yourself by Jesus
2. Speak of the Catholic Church with courtesy
3. Explain biblical concepts and terminology
- – And More – -

Then she said, “Jesus died for me. I love my Jesus.” Sometimes I don’t know what “joy inexpressible and filled with glory” means, but at that moment I did. I had no words. So I just squeezed her hand gently and smiled at her through tears and sat there. That’s what you do in the presence of greatness.

Don’t be surprised if people look at you and say hurtful things like “she is really great with child.” Even more irritating will be the future idea that little Baby “no crying did make” when you know that he is fully human.

God expresses His love in Mark 10:21-22 and John 11:5-6 just as much as He does in John 3:16.

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16

Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But at these words he was saddened, and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property. Mark 10:21-22

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when He heard that he was sick, He then stayed two days longer in the place where He was. John 11:5-6

Verses 5 and 6 paraphrased: “Jesus loved Martha, Mary and Lazarus. Therefore, when he heard Lazarus was sick; he didn’t go to him right away. He waited around until he knew Lazarus was dead.” This makes no sense to our human sensibilities. Death is our greatest enemy, right? We want it to say, “Jesus loved them so much that he ran as fast as he could and healed Lazarus.” But it doesn’t say that. Instead, because of Jesus’ great love for them, He didn’t go right away. He put them through a miserable trial so the final outcome would make them even more joyful and bring God greater glory.

Jesus wanted to do something extraordinary for these friends he loved so dearly. He wanted to do something for them that he had never done for anyone else before, and would never do again. He brought his friend Lazarus back to life after four days in the tomb!

(Isaiah 54:7,8; 49:14-15; Romans 8:18)

How often does the love of God manifest itself in ways that are directly opposite what we expect?

How often do we thank God for this?

In Mark 10:21-22, the Bible says that Jesus felt a love for the rich young man who came to him seeking the way to eternal life. How did he show his love for the young man? He did this in a way similar to that of Mary and Martha; he put a trial before him. It was certainly not what the man (or the disciples for that matter) expected. Don’t you think that Mary and Martha expected Jesus to immediately come and heal Lazarus?

The point of this trial seems to be a test of whether the rich young man really wanted to be a part of the Kingdom of heaven or not. There is nothing you can lose in this life (including this life itself) that Christ cannot give back to you twofold or more in the next. (Job 42:10, Matthew 19:29)

Jesus spoke the truth in love for the benefit of the young man’s soul, but the man wasn’t willing to bear the cost of discipleship. Unlike the account of Lazarus’ resurrection, this one doesn’t have a happy ending. The young man went away grieving, because the cost was too high. From a salvation perspective, the rich young man committed suicide that day. He stood in the presence of the light of the world, and chose darkness. He stood before Him who was life itself, and chose death.

And Jesus let him walk away.

This is the natural state of the heart of every person on earth. Do we have free will? A right to choose? Yes we do – and we choose sin and death over love and life every single time. We have no ability, unless acted upon by God, to choose to love and trust Him. Even Martha and Mary failed to believe when Jesus tarried so long (John 11:21, 32).

In both cases, Jesus used these events to teach a lesson to His disciples. In both cases the lesson was the same. Believe, trust and obey, and you will have eternal life in His Kingdom (Jer. 39:18; Ezek. 36:26-7; John 11:40, 14:1; Rom. 15:13).

Isn’t that what John 3:16 is all about?

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Two weeks ago at church, our council of Elders called a man up to the front of the church before the worship service began. They presented him an award for being the most humble Christian at our church. The award was a tiny lapel pin a little smaller than a dime. The man accepted the award with a tearful and red-faced “Thank you all, so much” and returned to his seat. Last Sunday, the man came to church wearing the pin in the lapel of his jacket and the head elder took it away from him because he showed pride by wearing it and didn’t deserve it anymore.

This actually didn’t happen. It is an old joke rephrased. Nevertheless, humility can be a difficult concept to understand. Last week I listened to a two-part sermon preached by John Piper entitled Battling the Unbelief of a Haughty Spirit. You can download it and listen to it yourself here:

Battling the Unbelief of a Haughty Spirit Part 1.mp3

Battling the Unbelief of a Haughty Spirit Part 2.mp3

When I listen to podcast sermons (usually about a dozen each week) I like to take notes on the parts that hit me hard, or speak to my heart. Sometimes I’ll stop the playback and just start writing about instances where I have personally experienced what the preacher is talking about.

Here are the notes that I took while I was listening to the sermons linked above. If you get anything out of this, I encourage you to download and listen to the entire sermon. Not all of what appears below is Piper’s and not all of it is mine.

If you are a Christian and you know anything at all about humility, I am confident that you have encountered this type of pride at least once. Here are two examples: The man who volunteers for the worst task at a church function and then for weeks afterward, brags about doing such a menial job. The woman who helps somebody anonymously and then “lets slip” what she did to one friend who she knows can’t keep her mouth shut. These are examples of a craving that people have for other people to think well of them.

Each of these forms of pride is an example of making much of yourself. As Christians, we should be delighting in Christ alone and in God’s mercy to us.

Isn’t it funny, considering our size and place in the universe, that we humans would struggle with genuine humility?

True humility means casting everything on the Lord. Casting your anxieties on the Lord is humility, because proud people don’t feel that they need help from the Lord. Pride makes people deny their anxieties and want to look like they’ve got it all together. Piper says, “…how easy it is to ‘be made much of’ even for my self-denial.” We have to be such cool customers. God is our LAST refuge instead of our first thought. We are afraid to be vulnerable. We are afraid to look human.

Piper says, “God loves people, but hates pride.” The condition of your heart is of utmost importance. It is almost impossible for anyone to tell the difference between genuine humility and false humility in another person, but it is easy for us to know it in ourselves. This is a skill that we work inwardly on ourselves, not an outward skill that we work on others.

Surprisingly, this one was not fictional and was written by a respected journalist named Michael Gartner. It is entitled, “A Life Without Left Turns.” If you would like to read the entire article, here is the link. If you would just like a synopsis, read on.

My father never drove a car.

Well, that’s not quite right.

I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

“In those days,” he told me when he was in his 90s, “to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it.”

At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in:

“Oh, bull___!” she said. “He hit a horse.”

“Well,” my father said, “there was that, too.”

So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car.

Another portion tells about his father and mother’s church habits:

My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn’t seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.) He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin’s Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish’s two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he’d take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church.

He called the priests “Father Fast” and “Father Slow.”

Later in the account we find out why it is so named.

As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, “Do you want to know the secret of a long life?” “I guess so,” I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.

“No left turns,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“No left turns,” he repeated. “Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn.”

The piece ends with his father’s death at 102 years of age.

“I want you to know,” he said, clearly and lucidly, “that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have.”

A short time later, he died.

A man gets married, works hard all his life, has two sons, walks everywhere, doesn’t drive a car, avoids church, lives to be 102 years old, dies peacefully and goes straight to Hell.

If there is nothing more to this life than to live happily, comfortably, healthily and die peacefully, then religion is a complete waste of time and we should just skip church like this man did and go for a walk instead!  His story is an example of how not to live and we should pray that our lives are not wasted as this man’s was. How terribly, tragically sad this story is. Proof that Satan will give you anything you want in this life if he can have you in the next.

But if the Bible is the truth and there is more to our existence than this brief journey we call life, then our purpose must be to never live a life focused on selfish comfort and pleasure. Our true purpose must be to reach those who do not know about Jesus and share God’s gift of eternal life. (I’ll let you in on a secret: most of your friends at church are trying their best to live their lives like the man in this story. If they have retired already, time is running out for you to tell them that they’re wasting their life.)

Here is a truly heartwarming story that Christians should pass around more than the one by Gartner. This one is from John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life.

In April 2000, Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon, West Africa. Ruby was over eighty. Single all her life, she poured it out for one great thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick. Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing eighty years old, and serving at Ruby’s side in Cameroon. The brakes failed, the car went over a cliff, and they were both killed instantly. I asked my congregation: Was that a tragedy? Two lives, driven by one great passion, namely, to be spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ – even two decades after most of their American counterparts had retired to throw  away their lives on trifles. No, that is not a tragedy. That is a glory. These lives were not wasted. And these lives were not lost. “Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35).

Americans spend billions of dollars every year trying to live a life like Michael Gartner’s father. Can you imagine him standing before Jesus on the great Day of Judgment and telling God, “I walked instead of going to church.” Or “I never drove a car and didn’t let my wife make left-hand turns.”

What will you say when you stand before Him?

Please, don’t hold this man’s life up as something to be emulated. His life was a waste. His one and only, precious life was a waste because he refused to know Jesus. Please don’t waste your life like this man. Please!