Blog
Emissaries who don’t need to scramble.
Christians have a message to spread. This much is obvious from reading the New Testament. But should we see ourselves as people who are desperate, doing anything to gain an audience and approval for our message? Here’s some helpful insight into this question. It’s written to pastors, but it applies to anyone who wants to spread Jesus’ message:
If you and I see ourselves merely as peddlers or purveyors of a spiritual “message,” we rapidly become salesmen for the gospel instead of true ministers of the gospel. That is, we’re always scrambling to persuade reluctant customers to buy our product, rather than serving as emissaries sent by God to issue his perennial joyous invitation toward genuine freedom and release: “Repent and believe the good news.” (Mark 1:15)
Paul had a clear understanding of his identity that influenced his life as a pastor: “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” (1 Cor 4:1)
A steward is never a salesman, but an agent.
He serves in place of another.
Pastors [and indeed, all servant of Jesus] are true agents of Jesus, speaking his words and doing his works…dispensing Christ’s own hope and life in a despairing and dying world.
— Harold Senkbeil, The Care of Souls, p.23
An Important Commitment to Make
I ran into this quote on the book of Proverbs from William Smith in the middle of an article on parenting. Nice, practical article, for those of you who are interested. But notice the wide application, to all of us, that he offers for Proverbs:
The book of Proverbs is dedicated to this notion that living well within God’s world requires conversation. It takes the form of a father personally addressing his son, passionately pleading with him to gain wisdom and understanding (Prov. 1:8–9). If the son listens, then the father promises that he will escape being a fool and won’t ruin his life (Prov. 1:32–33). That transformation from fool to wise man takes place as one person talks to another about who God is and how he affects all of life.
As you read, however, you realize this isn’t simply a book for children, despite addressing “my son” multiple times, because a wise person develops a taste for transforming conversations that continue his entire lifetime.
He surrounds himself with a steady rhythmic beat of God-oriented conversations.
He welcomes people who will talk to him about himself and about his life and how every part of life relates to God (e.g., Prov. 1:5; 12:5; 15:22).
More than that, he commits himself not simply to hearing from others, but to joining the discussion, speaking to others who want to hear so that their lives will be enriched (e.g., Prov. 12:18; 15:7; 16:23). The book of Proverbs pictures the person who grows wise as someone who swims in a sea of words without drowning.
It’s worth noting that even after Jesus pours out his Holy Spirit on his people, he remains committed to maturing his people, in part, through their conversations with each other (e.g., Rom. 15:14; Eph. 5:18–20; Col. 3:16; 1 Thess. 5:14; 2 Tim. 2:2, 24–26; 4:2; Titus 1:9; Heb. 3:13). He expects you to participate in an ongoing, never-ending conversation with his people that links Christ and faith in him to life, because every one of God’s people shares in his ministry of words (1 Pet. 4:10–11).
“Swimming in a sea of words without drowning,” is a great image. When the words are wise, and shaped by God’s words, it’s a good sea to swim in. In fact, when the words are God’s words, it’s the sea we’re supposed to be swimming in. And we all do swim in a sea of words. Who speaks the words that make up the sea you swim in?
“He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.”
The words of Scripture, the book of Proverbs, solid pulpit teaching, real conversation with real friends who follow Jesus–these are the God-given means for filling up our mental space with wise, helpful words.
What sea do you want to swim in?
How can you get to know God?
Here is a great meditation from Harold Senkbeil on how a person really gets to know God. Enjoy:
In our digital age, we’re swimming in gigabytes of data, but thirsting for reality. We’re drowning in information, but starved for genuine community. Technology links us instantaneously with people all around the globe, yet paradoxically the more information we get and the more virtual connections we acquire, the more isolated and lonely we become. I enjoy all the technology of social media as much as anyone else, yet these virtual communities are poor substitutes for the kind of exchange that happens when I put my arms around my wife, hold my grandchildren on my lap, or sit face to face with a friend for mutual conversation and consoling flesh and blood interchange of what lies on our hearts.
If that’s true in terms of relationships between humans, how much more essential is it when it comes to our relationship with the Lord God, who made heaven and earth? Though we infer something about God by looking at the world he has made (his power and majesty, for instance) we would know nothing about his true nature if he hadn’t revealed himself to us…
If you want to know something about God, you’ll need to get to know him by his word; that’s the long and the short of it.
There is simply no reliable knowledge of God apart from his word.
…Yet that word is not the kind of information dump we’ve come to associate with most ordinary human communication–a kind of data transfer. Rather, God’s word is the means by which he discloses himself and opens up his heart to us so we can see what kind of God we have, how he may be addressed and accessed here in this world, and how we can receive his gifts for our forgiveness, life, and salvation.
–Harold Senkbeil, The Care of Souls, p.36-37
Helps for Memorizing Scripture
I can’t say enough about how good it is to commit scripture to memory.
But here are some things to help you, if you want to get to it. (They’re always on the “Resources” page. Just click on “Devotions.”)
Personal Devotions
- Planning Your Personal Devotions (PDF)
- 10 Questions to Help You Read the Bible Better
Bible Reading Plans
- Canonical: the Bible in a year, in regular order (PDF)
- Chronological: the Bible in a year, in chronological order (PDF)
- Historical: the Bible in a year, in the order the books were written (PDF)
- OT/NT: the Bible in a year, with Old and New Testaments every day (PDF)
- The Kingdom Reading Plan (PDF)
Bible Memorization
- Philippians Memorization Plan (PDF)
- Romans 8 Memorization Plan (PDF)
- “Memorizing the Word is Possible” (PDF)
- 18 Tips to memorize scripture (Word doc)
- Help memorizing large portions (PDF)
- The “6×6” method with progress sheet (PDF)
- Memorization bookmark for your Bible (PDF)
- Chart to keep track your progress (PDF)
- Not sure what verses to memorize? (Word doc)
Does Jesus Confuse You? Here’s the Answer.
Does Jesus confuse you? I mean really confuse you–like, Christianity seems frustrating and full of contradictions and maybe not worth pursuing at all. Some of the stories you hear about Jesus seem great–sometimes he seems full of love and acceptance and, you know, he’s helping people and talking about love and everything like that. And then some of the stories you hear are just odd–the weird parables, the talk of the end of the world, the really harsh sounding things he says about “repenting” and things like that. What’s really going on with the whole Jesus thing?
If you or anyone you know has that reaction to Jesus, what’s the answer? Interestingly enough, the answer is found right in the histories of Jesus’ earthly life that we have preserved in the New Testament. The kind of reaction to Jesus that starts with interest and degenerates into confused frustration is exactly the kind of reaction we read that people had towards him during his public teaching ministry. In fact, it was probably, by the numbers, the most common reaction to Jesus. In the gospel accounts, we read about many times when people were “amazed,” “astonished,” “afraid,” “offended,” and just generally confused, or even turned off, by the things he said and did.
But of course, everyone didn’t end up that way, even if it was how they started out. What was the difference? How did some people press through the sometimes difficult-to-understand things Jesus did and said, to get to a place of insight and appreciation? The answer is surprisingly simple, and, once you see it in the Bible, you realize that it was always there. For instance, just in the book of Mark, there’s all of these verses:
But when He was alone, those around Him with the twelve asked Him about the parable. (4:10)
But without a parable He did not speak to them. And when they were alone, He explained all things to His disciples. (4:34)
When He had entered a house away from the crowd, His disciples asked Him concerning the parable. (7:17 )
And when He had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” (9:28)
Then He came to Capernaum. And when He was in the house He asked them, “What was it you disputed among yourselves on the road?” (9:33)
In the house His disciples also asked Him again about the same matter. (10:10)
These verses show a consistent pattern. There were the crowds who would often get confused by what he was saying. Even many of those who, at one time, considered themselves his followers, after a while, stopped following, because what he was saying was too hard. (In John chapter 6 you read these verses: “Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can understand it?’… From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.”) But there were others, like those Mark writes about in the verses above, who were too interested in the things he was saying and doing to walk away. And all they had to do was hang around, wait for the crowds to leave, and ask Jesus what he was talking about. And every time (read the passages!) he explained himself clearly to them.
And the same principle holds today.
God is still working. The message of Jesus is still going out. The stories of the things he did, and the words he said, are still there for any man or woman to grapple with. If they confuse you, and you end up giving up on it all, then you end up to have nothing to do with Jesus. If they confuse you, but entice you, and you decide to stick it out and find out what Jesus was doing and what he was talking about, you will get your answers. If you attach yourself to him by applying yourself, over the long haul, to learn, Jesus will give you insight. This is called, “being a disciple.” You will come to have an ever-growing understanding of what you need to know, and who Jesus is, and what he’s asking of you, and how he’ll help you do it.
You will be a follower of Jesus.
And the word to you will be:
To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables.
If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given.
For whoever has, to him more will be given.
God the Peaceful.
On Monday night I ended the study by reading a few passages from A.B. Simpson’s book Wholly Sanctified. I highly recommend it as a not-too-long read. As I mentioned during the study, I’ve posted this here twice before, in 2012 and again in 2015. I can’t believe it’s 2020, but here it is again, for a new year:
Sanctification brings the soul into harmony with God and the laws of the Son’s own being. There must be peace; there can be in no other way. Sanctification brings into the [human] spirit the abiding presence of the very God of peace Himself.
True peace is nothing less than the deep, divine tranquility of His own eternal calm.
We must not live by long intervals, but by the breath and by the moment. Each instant must be dedicated and presented to God, a ceaseless sacrifice, and each breath be poured into His bosom and received back from His being.
Oh, let us yield ourselves unto God.
Let us receive Him into every pore and fiber of our beings.
Let every chord and every member be a channel for His indwelling and inworking, and our whole spirit, soul and body sanctified wholly and presented blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then will these bodies leap into that higher plane and rise to that nobler destiny of which He has given us now the earnest and the foretaste even in this mortal flesh.
Sanctification brings the soul into harmony with God and the laws of the Soul’s own being. There must be peace, there can be in no other way.
What God is Like
Happy New Year, everyone. Last night we took the evening to look at what the fruit of the Spirit (in Galatians 5:22-23) tell us about God. Here are some notes from the study:
Galatians 5:22-23 — 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
Thinking about the Fruit of the Spirit (v.22).
The idea in this passage, starting in verse 16, is that these are the things that happen in and through someone who has God’s Spirit in them, and God working with them. This is what happens in the life of someone who’s in communication with God, someone who’s attentive to God and organizes their life so that they can understand who he is and what he’s doing and saying, so they can get on board with that. This is what the Holy Spirit of God produces in someone’s life when He’s active in their life. When God is actively working in your life, these are the things that happen inside of you, and these are the things that shape your actions, so that they come out of you too.
Now here’s the crucial link to get us into what we’re going to look at tonight. What I want to zero in on is this question: Why are these the things that are produced in your lives when God is active in them? My short answer to this question is: because these things are true about God. They are who he is and what he is like. They describe his qualities. In other words, he produces these things in our lives because he is just like this, and he “rubs off” on us, so to speak—the more we have him in our lives, the closer we are with God and the more time we spend cultivating our relationship with him, the more we become.
Now, if this is true, it brings up a very interesting question. To illustrate it, just imagine that you had a friend who was really not a good athlete at all. And then imagine that he told you that he had a new friend. And then a few months later, you’re hanging out with him again and he beats you in a on-on-one basketball game, and drains a three pointer to seal the game. And you’re like, “Ok where’d you learn that?” And he says, “Oh from hanging out with that new friend I told you about.” What would you conclude about this new friend? Probably, that that this guy is some great athlete, to be able to take your clutz friend and turn him into an athletic wizard.
So again, look at the list of things in verse 19-21. One of the things that’s happening in that verse is that it’s pointing out what kind of people we all are before we are changed by God. I’m not saying we all do all those things. Probably only a few people do all those things. I’m saying we all have some of those things in our lives. We probably look down on the things in that list we’re not involved in, and excused and ignore the things in that list we are involved in, but it’s all just an indication of who we are without God. So the point of verses 22 and 23 is that The Holy Spirit can take people like that, like verses 19-21, and turn them into verses 22-23. And if he can do that, what does that tell us about God?
And when we add in one other thing, that the Bible is clear that god is infinite, and we add that to this whole discussion, then, it gets really interesting. If God is infinite, imagine what that means about who he is in relationship to each item in this list.
What does it tell us about God that these are the things that happen in us and through us if the Holy Spirit is in our life?
Love
If closeness to God produces love in someone’s life, what does that tell us about God?God is the most loving person there has ever been. Full stop. In fact, the bible says, he is love. Love is at the core of his being. It is an essential ingredient in his Goodness. He is infinitely loving. There is no end to his affection and good will. He wants good things for everyone everywhere. He is self-giving and big hearted, holding nothing back, with no end. He even became human so that he could do the ultimately loving thing and die for us. He is never small-hearted, tight-fisted, hateful. He is only generous, all the time.
Joy
If closeness to God produces joy in someone’s life, what does that tell us about God? God must be a very happy person. And because of who he is, he must be infinitely happy and joyful. Think about that. Infinite happiness. He is infinitely emotionally resilient, not easily ruffled or offended. He is never sullen, bored, or irritable. He’s never detached or disinterested. He is eternally optimistic, excited about the future, and engaged in the present. What will it produce in my life, if I get really close to someone who is infinitely happy—in himself?
Peace
If closeness to God produces peace in someone’s life, what does that tell us about God?God is the kind of person who can take someone who is all torn up inside, or anxious, or angry, or hurt, and produce…peace. Doesn’t that sound great? And the reason he can is that He is, in himself, the most peaceful being in the universe. Nothing worries him. Nothing stresses him out. He has an infinite capacity to handle the issues of life, without descending into anxiety. He is never anxious. He is never apprehensive, or annoyed, or aggravated. Think about what good news this is—the creator of the universe cannot be thrown off. A.B. Simpson says when someone has true closeness to God, it “brings into the spirit the abiding presence of the very God of peace Himself. True peace is nothing less than the deep, divine tranquility of His own eternal calm.”
Longsuffering
“Longsuffering” means patience, or endurance. A history of closeness to God produces, in a life, the ability to endure difficult things without giving up. It produces the ability to stick with difficult people without abandoning them. So, if this is true—if hanging out with God makes me better able to press on through difficult things, what does that tell me about God? God is infinitely patient. He has an infinite ability to put up with me, and every other difficult person in the world, for all time. And He has an unending capacity for putting up with the messes we’ve made. Now, of course, he won’t put up with our messes forever—but it’s not because he just couldn’t handle it anymore. Whenever God unleashes judgement on the world, it’s not because he finally lost control. It’s because his love and wisdom dictated that it was time to cut some situation short. But it wasn’t because he couldn’t put up with us. He could put up with us forever. Because he has infinite patience.
Kindness
If closeness to God makes someone more kind, what does that tell us about God? “Kind” isn’t really a cool word. And we don’t really say “kind,” we say things like, “nice.” But “kind” is bigger. “Nice” can mean just, like, they don’t make anyone mad. “Kind” means there’s some active goodwill that goes out from the person and does good things in people’s lives around them. Closeness to God will make you like that. Because God is infinitely kind.
He is always considerate, always knows what’s best, and wants what’s best for everyone. Theologians say he always “wills the good” of everyone. He wants the best for everyone. He’s never mean or vindictive or tight-fisted. He wants everyone to be happy, healthy, and whole, forever. He wants the planet clean and healthy, and all the animals doing good, and men and women enjoying it and living full lives, forever. He wants you to be able to overcome trials and know that you’re loved and he wants you to be close to him—so you can be full of life…
Goodness
This word means “positive moral quality characterized by interest in the welfare of others.” If closeness to God makes someone “good,” what does that tell us about God? God is infinitely good. He is never evil, he doesn’t have a dark side, or skeletons in his closet. In our culture, we’ve lost the ability even to create characters like that, or imagine anyone like that. But God is like that. He doesn’t have a quick temper or a pet vice or a secret bad habit he nurses. You’ll never catch him being someone other than he’s always shown himself to be. He doesn’t love things that are mean or things that break people down or ruin things. He only builds, grows, heals, cleans, and loves. When he’s around, things are good! Things work. Things live and grow. People get fixed. He’ll never do you wrong—only good things come from knowing him. In fact, he’s so good, his presence will heal the whole world. He’s infinitely good—he’s going to heal the whole universe.
Faithfulness
If closeness to God makes someone more faithful—more consistent, and better to depend on, what does that tell us about God? God is infinitely faithful. He never lets anyone down, and never has. He doesn’t have limits. He doesn’t get tired and give up. He doesn’t get discouraged. You can depend on him forever, for anything. You can bank everything on him, and he’ll always come through. He never lies, never drops the ball, never changes course on a whim. He’s the same today that he was yesterday. And he’ll be the same tomorrow.
Gentleness
Closeness to God will make you more gentle. Why? Because God is infinitely Gentle. Think about that. What does that even mean? Here’s a quote about what the word means here: Gentleness is “the flavor someone gives off when they’re not overly impressed by a sense of their own importance—humility, courtesy, meekness.” God, the most infinitely important being in the universe, the most infinitely strong being in the universe, is infinitely…gentle. He’s completely able to control his own strength in order to make it do good things. He knows how to handle delicate situations, and fragile people. Even with all his power and importance, he doesn’t have a craving to impress—think of Jesus, saying, “I am meek (that’s the same word) and lowly at heart.” Jesus is a human picture of God’s infinite gentleness.
Self-control
Closeness to God will make you a more self-controlled person. God is infinitely self-controlled. He’s always completely in command of his emotions, and his actions. He never lashes out in anger, or reacts in hurt or selfishness. Whenever he does something, it is infinitely thought through, and completely in keeping with his love and wisdom.I don’t know about you, but thinking about God this way makes me want to worship him.
A lot of us have been let down by a lot of people. The people closest to us have failed to be what they should have been. But here’s the good news: there is a being who’s closer to you than your dad—because he made your soul. He’s more powerful than the president. He’s wiser than your teachers and coaches. And he sticks closer than a brother—because he’s God. And that means he’s infinitely loving, and joyful, and peaceful, and patient, and kind, and god, and faithful, and gentle, and self-control. Want the good news? Good news—that’s God. That’s who made you. That’s who invites you to walk with him. That’s who tells you that sin and death only separate you from his goodness.
The more we look at him, the more we want to know him, and the more we worship him.
God’s Word and Closeness to God
A little while ago I posted some thoughts on the relationship between God and the Word of God from theologian John Frame, including this great quote:
“Wherever God is, the word is, and wherever the word is, God is. Whenever God speaks, he himself is there with us.”
This is quite the assertion, but Frame backs it up in detail in chapter 11 of his book The Doctrine of the Word of God. As the chapter winds to a close, Frame goes even further, pressing the implications of the verses he quotes to a logical conclusion…
Finally, the Word is God
John 1:1 comes right out and says this, together with other passages we have mentioned that correlate God’s word with Jesus Christ (Heb 1:1-3; 1 John 1:1-3; Rev. 3:14; 19:13). We are inclined to focus on the Christology of John 1:1-14 and thus to take it as identifying Jesus Christ with the word of God and therefore with God. But we should also note the fact that this verse identifies God with the creative word of Genesis 1. We have seen that in Genesis 1, God creates all things by his word of Genesis 1. When John’s Gospel starts “In the beginning,” any Jewish reader would have caught the allusion back to Genesis 1:1. John 1:1-14 is about that word, the word that created all things. The allusion becomes more obvious in verse 3: “All things were made through him [i.e., through the word], and without him was not anything made that was made.” So when verse 1 says that “the Word was God,” it indicates not only the deity of Christ, but also the deity of the creative word. So the passage teaches not only an identity between God and Christ, but a threefold identity, between God, Christ, and the creative world.
So the word is God. When we encounter the word of God, we encounter God. When we encounter God, we encounter his word. We cannot encounter God without the word, or the word without God. God’s word and his personal presence are inseparable. His word, indeed, is his personal presence. Whenever God’s Word is spoken, read, or heard, God himself is there.
The implications of this are huge.
Paul’s second letter to Timothy (3:16-17) says: “You must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
“Inspiration” here has the idea of “breathed out by God.” In other words, the words of the scriptures are carried by God’s very breath. In other words, where the words of the Bible are, God is there—breathing them out. God is present there with you when you read it, with us, together, when we hear it. He’s walking in the cool of the day. He’s calling from the top of the mountain. He’s surrounding us, speaking. The only issue is—will we hear him?
Now, of course, we all know that sometimes people read the bible and feel like they heard nothing. And they don’t feel like God is close to them. But if it’s true that God is present wherever his word is, that means that if we don’t feel God’s nearness when we’re interacting with the words of the bible, the issue is with us; and that means that if we feel far away from God, we can grow in this area.
We can cultivate a nearness to God in His word. How? By “getting on his wavelength” in terms of our thoughts, desires and goals. We have to “get into rhythm” with him. In the pages of the Bible, we can hear God’s words, and if we learn to humbly look for his wisdom, and listen to his thoughts, and search for all the ways that our thoughts are different than his thoughts—we can learn to think like God. That’s the key. It’s tuning the frequency of our heart to be able to pick up his thoughts, and it’s getting the wavelengths of our thoughts to match his. We learn to understand the kinds of things God says and does—so we can better understand what he’s thinking about and what he’s saying. The main way God accomplishes this is through the scriptures. They acquaint us with who God is, and with his thoughts, so that we can know what he’s like, and see what he’s doing.
Which means that in the Bible, God draws near to us by revealing his thoughts to us, and by actively drawing us to seek him, and then by conforming our thoughts to his—if we’ll seek him and reject our old evil.
It’s just true that God is near in his word, and so we should surround ourselves with it and see how that begins to affect our sense of his nearness. But we can also see how God draws near to us in his word. Wherever we are, we can say He’s right here, with us, right now. It’s just that we’re not naturally on his wavelength. You probably know know the experience of having his word open in front of you, and you’re reading it, but then you have a thought like—God is really far away. Where is he? I can’t sense him. I can’t find him. It can happen even when we’re reading the bible. But press on, and the Bible will be saying what God says: “I’m right here. And this is what I’m thinking about and this is what I’m doing…and this is what I love.” If God’s thoughts seem like they don’t make sense, we need to let his thoughts challenge our thoughts, and change them.
Again, 2 Tmothy 3:16 answers the question of how that practically happens and helps us see how God’s word changes us. It does it with doctrine—it tells us who God is. It does it with reproof—it shows us what thoughts or ways of living are wrong. It does it with correction—it teaches us how to change. And it does it with instruction—it helps us move forward to really know and serve God. When you’re “equipped” for every good work, as the verse says, it means that you’re ready to know what God’s doing in the world and to do it along side of him.
To try to paint a picture of it: When a son is young, dad goes away every morning, and the son doesn’t know where he’s going. Dad feels far away. When the son gets a little older, he learns what the father’s doing. The father has a business. The father does a certain kind of work. He doesn’t think of his dad as far away anymore because he understands. But when the son is fully mature, he learns the father’s thoughts and ways, and joins in running the family business with his father. That’s a high level of closeness. And something like this is what the Bible seems to point us to in terms of growing with God.
There’s another phrase for all of this in the Bible: “hearing God’s Word…” Sometimes Christians act like the ultimate Christian experience is to have messages from God constantly in our ears, like a spiritual GPS with a direct uplink to a running commentary on our lives from God himself. But actually, this process—having the words of scripture speak to us and shape our thoughts and feelings—is probably closer to what the Bible means by “hearing God’s word.” God is already speaking—in the words of the Bible. The ability to hear the words of Scripture as God’s Words to us, to know God’s thoughts and understand what he’s doing in the world and with our lives, to have all of that understanding and awareness shaped by the bible—that is what ends up producing a deep, inner sense of the closeness of God that’s better than if God was whispering in our ears all the time—and this is because God is actually near in His words.
So think about it. If our thoughts are full of God’s word, doesn’t that mean…God is dwelling with us, in our very thoughts? And, just to put it out there, when that’s our situation, won’t that make it easier for us to actually know when he might be communicating something to us that isn’t explicitly found in the Bible?
Maybe this is what Jesus meant by having ears to hear.
How to Furnish Your Heart with Assurance
“It is harder for the heart to be furnished with assurance than for the mind to be endowed with thought.”
So writes John Calvin in in third book of The Institutes of the Christian Religion. In other words–it’s easier to fill your mind with information than to make your heart strong in faith.
God’s answer for this is Himself–His Spirit sent into our hearts. Calvin observes: “The Spirit accordingly serves as a seal, to seal up in our hearts those very promises, the certainty of which [He] has previously impressed upon our minds; and takes the place of a guarantee to confirm and establish them.” Just thinking of this is enough to make you praise God. God himself comes personally to help us grasp and hold onto the things our hearts most need–assurance of his love, mercy, and final victory. This is what God himself does for us.
But is there anything we can do? Can we take steps to strengthen ourselves, or be strengthened in the things we most need to be strong in? Yes, says Calvin. Give attention to God’s word. And don’t let it stay on the surface of your mind. Do whatever you have to do to send it deep within–“The Word of God is not received by faith if it flits about in the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth of the heart that it may be an invincible defense to withstand and drive off all the stratagems of temptation.”
“Our God, contracted to a span.”
A Hymn for Christmas Eve, by Charles Wesley:
Let earth and heaven combine,
Angels and men agree,
To praise in songs divine
The incarnate Deity,
Our God contracted to a span,
Incomprehensibly made man.
He laid his glory by,
He wrapped him in our clay;
Unmarked by human eye,
The latent Godhead lay;
Infant of days he here became,
And bore the mild Immanuel’s name.
Unsearchable the love
That hath the Saviour brought;
The grace is far above
Or man or angels thought;
Suffice for us that God, we know,
Our God, is manifest below.
He deigns in flesh to appear,
Widest extremes to join;
To bring our vileness near,
And make us all divine:
And we the life of God shall know,
For God is manifest below.
Made perfect first in love,
And sanctified by grace,
We shall from earth remove,
And see his glorious face:
Then shall his love be fully showed,
And man shall then be lost in God.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Get In Touch
Got Questions or anything else? It’d be great to hear from you!
Feel free to contact us and get in touch.
Hope to hear from you soon!