Faith knows God is in our corner even in rounds where we feel ourselves taking a beating; that Christ declares our victory before the bell has even rung.
Faith sees God’s hand over every step of our spiritual race, including any missteps.
The next time you feel hopeless and helpless in your war with sin, remember that Jesus Christ is on your side, and His Spirit will never forsake His post within you.
The worldly wicked prefer pleasures in the present at the expense of future blessedness. They will awake in the life to come with no inheritance stored up, but only judgment and wrath.
Regarding Psalms 17:13-14, “Deliver my soul from the wicked…men of the world whose portion in this life.”
The best defense is providence. After and above all other variables, God is able to deliver whom he wills from trouble.
People fall in private, long before they fall in public. The tree falls with a great crash, but the secret decay which accounts for it, is often not discovered until it is down on the ground.
Letter to a Man on the Brink of Grace
The following was written to a dear friend in the midst of his struggles to comprehend grace, forgiveness, and the Christian’s battle with sin. I pray it is of use to you.
I have spilled my heart to you in this letter. Please interpret its great length as being a measure of my love and concern, rather than mere prolixity. My aim has been to pour you a river of grace; if even a drop splashes effectually upon your ankles from my Jordan correspondence, I shall thank the Lord, though my prayer is that it may go over your head and submerge you entirely in the love of God in Christ.
Friend, I wish to be clear. Perhaps the tremendous difference between your and our experience of Christian life is that you approach God and godliness with a very different concept of what grace is. You affirmed my interpretation of your words, that grace is “the act or state of forgiveness.” But this is hardly what we understand grace to be at all. Forgiveness is one of many things grace does, but is not grace itself. In fact, forgiveness is only one half of justification. Grace as we speak of it is something else entirely.
Movies That Take God’s Name in Vain
How should we respond when movies take God’s name in vain? The following is a letter I wrote in response to a friend who asked. Perhaps it will be of use to you.
Hello, ____________. I appreciate your consideration of my opinion, and that you have been patient to wait for it.
Your concerns are ones which I share and, might I add, I hope all Christians, too. The instinct to cringe or even feel anger when we hear God’s name misused indicates a healthy sensitivity regarding the Lord’s honor. To take God’s name in vain is a cardinal offense, one which, in the Mosaic economy, warranted the most severe civil punishments. The unfathomable sacredness of God’s name lies in that it represents his whole character and authority. Respecting it is therefore placed above virtually every other moral question in scripture.
Overcoming Despair About Personal Change
If our only hope of personal change was to let time and nature do their work, we might lose hope that ourselves and others would ever be brought to faith or holiness. Yet one of the deepest works of personal transformation to ever occur was that which happened within Saul on the road to Damascus, and this was accomplished in an instant by the Spirit. [Acts 9, 22] One moment Saul viewed Jesus as his enemy. Then a light appeared from heaven and a voice spoke, “Saul, why are you persecuting me?” As the bitter Pharisee beheld the fearful glory of the Son, a more mysterious light suddenly appeared within his heart—faith, the gift of God. Now in a moment he believed Jesus was his greatest benefactor, for having died to reconcile him, an enemy of God, to the Father at the cross. The greatest change imaginable happened in the twinkling of an eye, when a spiritually dead man was resurrected by God through new birth into spiritual life.
Too often we block our own view of Christ. Yet when we look around ourselves and our present circumstances to the cross and who we are in Him, we suddenly discover fresh beauties to behold.
