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Quotes

Quote – Jan 27, 2015 – Personal Worship

Your private devotional life has the power to kill you like nothing else does. By “kill you,” I mean that it has the power to kill the “me-ism” that is inside you (and me) that will again and again cause you to be in the way of, rather than part of, whatever it is that God is doing at the moment. Private personal worship is an effective tool of grace in the hands of God to kill those things in you that must die in order that you be what you have been called to be and do what you have been appointed to do in your place of ministry.
–Paul David Tripp

This is the quote that I have placed at the top of my annual “Personal Worship Plan” to remind me to make sure I have a solid plan of action to kill the things in me that keep me from becoming the person God desires.

Again, here is a blank copy of that worship plan if you would like to use it yourself:
Personal Worship Plan Booklet Link (Just click on this pdf image link to open or download the file.)

Categories
Quotes

Quote – Jan 26, 2015 – Clear Windows

…rather than being a perfect portrait that assures people that the gospel is true, you and I are called to be windows through which people look and see the glory of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. It is our weakness that demonstrates both the essentiality and power of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Only His ever-present and powerful grace could enable a person, who still needs to be transformed himself, to be used as an instrument of His transforming grace in the lives of others. This frees us from pretending that we are what we are not. It frees us from boasting about what we could never have produced on our own, and it frees the people we serve from putting us on a messianic pedestal that should be reserved for Jesus only. We must preach to ourselves a gospel of ongoing weakness and sufficient grace.
–Paul David Tripp

Yesterday, I commented that we must show people who Jesus is, but we must remember that we are not a perfect reflection. We are not messiahs. Only Jesus is. Therefore, get rid of all the dirt, grime, and filth that could make it difficult to see through you; become as clear a window as you possibly can so they can look through you to see Jesus.

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Quotes

Quote – Jan 25, 2015 – Loving the Unlovable

It is staggering that God should love sinners; yet it is true. God loves creatures who have become unlovely and (one would have thought) unlovable. There was nothing whatever in the objects of his love to call it forth; nothing in us could attract or prompt it. Love among persons is awakened by something in the beloved, but the love of God is free, spontaneous, unevoked, uncaused. God loves people because he has chosen to love them and no reason for his love can be given except his own sovereign good pleasure.
–J. I. Packer

Follow this idea…
God chose to love us when we were unlovable.
God placed within us His Holy Spirit.
God has given us the power to love others with His compassion.
Therefore, we can choose to love others with compassion and patience, even though they are difficult.

God tells us: Turn the other cheek, go the extra mile… why? Because it is what God did for you. Now do it for others to show them who God is!

Categories
Quotes

Quote – Jan 24, 2015 – Control

Why should we want Him to have control of our lives?
Besides the fact that He deserves it because of who He is, He knows He is the only one in the universe who can control us without destroying us. No one will ever love you like Jesus. No one will ever know you better, care more for your wholeness and pull more for you. You don‘t need fifteen years of analysis to discover you are unrepeatable. The last breath Jesus breathed on this planet was for you. Jesus will meet you wherever you are, and He will help you. He is not intimidated by past failures, broken promises or wounds. He will make sense out of your brokenness. But He can only begin to be the Lord of your life today—not next Monday or next month but now. And the great and joyful paradox is that while He totally transforms us, He makes us more ourselves than ever before.

–Rebecca Pippert

I am so glad He is transforming me to be more myself that I ever was on my own!

Categories
Christian Living

I Am Following God, But Life Is Still Tough. What Gives?

a dark tunnel symbolizing the tough passages that God might lead  us through
I wish there were simple answers to all of life’s tough questions, but we often find that many of our questions cannot be packaged into a box that is easily and neatly tied up. This is a question that is difficult. What we discover in our lives is that as we strive to follow God we have this sense that life should get easier, but our experience is that many times life gets even harder. This leads to us questioning if God is mad at us or if we have misunderstood God’s leading:

      Here is another cause of deep perplexity for Christian people…. They have set off along the road which God seemed to indicate. And now, as a direct result, they have run into a crop of new problems which otherwise would not have arisen—isolation, criticism, abandonment by their friends, practical frustrations of all sorts. At once they grow anxious. …Is their own present experience of the rough side of life (they ask themselves) a sign from God that they are themselves like Jonah, off track, following the path of self-will rather than the way of God?
      It may be so, and the wise person will take occasion from his new troubles to check his original guidance very carefully. Trouble should always be treated as a call to consider one’s ways. But trouble is not necessarily a sign of being off track at all…[as the Bible] teaches in particular that following God’s guidance regularly leads to upsets and distresses which one would otherwise have escaped. Examples abound.
God guided Israel by means of a fiery and cloudy pillar that went before them; yet the way by which he led them involved the nerve-shredding cliffhanger of the Red Sea crossing….
      Jesus’ disciples were twice caught by night in bad weather on the Sea of Galilee, and both times the reason why they were there was the command of Jesus himself.
      [Paul] told the Ephesian elders whom he met on his way, “I am going to Jerusalem, bound in the Spirit, not knowing what shall befall me there; except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.” So it proved to be: Paul found trouble on the grand scale through following divine guidance.
      …For a final example and proof of the truth that following God’s guidance brings trouble, look at the life of the Lord Jesus himself. No human life has ever been so completely guided by God, and no human being has ever qualified so comprehensively for the description “a man of sorrows.” Divine guidance set Jesus at a distance from his family and fellow townsmen, brought him into conflict with all the nation’s leaders, religious and civil, and led finally to betrayal, arrest and the cross.
      …By every human standard of reckoning, the cross was a waste—the waste of a young life, a prophet’s influence, a leader’s potential. We know the secret of its meaning and achievement only from God’s own statements. Similarly, the Christian’s guided life may appear as a waste—as with Paul, spending years in prison because he followed God’s guidance to Jerusalem, when he might otherwise have been evangelizing Europe the whole time. Nor does God always tell us the why and wherefore of the frustrations and losses which are part and parcel of the guided life.
      Sooner or later, God’s guidance, which brings us out of darkness into light, will also bring us out of light into darkness. It is part of the way of the cross.

But thankfully, what I have found in my own experience is that even though I might be taken to difficult places by the guiding hand of God, the great news is that He not only holds my hand taken me to there, but he also never lets go as He leads me through them.

And there is a purpose for me going through it, even if I don’t understand it right now. I just have to trust Him even when I can’t see the end result.

I also need to remember that the purpose may not be about me, but rather about building up His kingdom. Since I have pledged my life to be His servant and to build His kingdom, then even if my life is crushed in the process, I am to be willing to be crushed for His sake.

I agree with the words of a song: “I’d rather walk in the dark with Jesus, than to walk in the light of my own. I’d rather go through the valley of the shadow with Him, than to dance on the mountains alone.” The Christian life is tough. It is not for the weak… it is for the courageous. It is for those with the courage to follow God even when the path isn’t clear and even when the road is rough.


        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer, and from Wayne Watson’s song: Walk in the Dark)