Saturday 31 December 2011

Worldly Sorrow Vs Godly Sorrow

I've been provoked by several things I've read recently, in the Bible and in my 'Redemption' book. About the contrast between worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. A few thoughts on the ways you can distinguish worldly sorrow. One or all might apply:

     1. You're more worried about other people knowing what you've done than God knowing what you've done. You're more concerned about failing in the eyes of people, about their opinions, or knowledge of your short-comings than the actual offence committed against God.

     2. You can't forgive yourself. Although you might superficially accept that you're forgiven by God, you can't bring yourself to the same conclusion. To your mind, your standards, opinions and judgement has more weight than God's. You set yourself as a higher judge than Him. In a sense, your real god is yourself.

     3. You regret the consequences of your actions rather than the actual sin itself. The sin provides (or provided) you a payoff which you enjoy and don't regret. You might relive that experience, or continue to enjoy that specific part of the sin in a habitual cycle.

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."
Matthew 5:4

"For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death."
2 Corinthians. 7:10

Friday 30 December 2011

Love Your Wife

"Children, like adults, always learn far more from what they see than from what they are told. One father said to us recently, 'I have realised that the best way to love my children is by loving my wife'".

Nicky & Sila Lee, The Marriage Book, p14

The Feeling of Inadequacy

I've been thinking about the feeling of inadequacy that we can often get in many areas of our lives. The feeling of inadequacy, even if that feeling is just a product of our own mind, often seems to produce the very thing itself.

Like if you're not very confident in a certain area, such as social situations, job interviews or a particular skill in your profession, it's tempting to shrink back and withdraw. You can get nervous and clam up a bit every time you're faced with that challenge. And in turn you all your fears are realised as you inevitably end up being pretty rubbish at the thing you were worried about. A bit of a vicious circle.

It seems that unless you use the nerves to drive you to be better, to pray hard, to engage and work hard, you're very much on the back-foot, on the losing end of the spectrum. In certain areas of my life I definitely have to switch off my brain, silence all those thoughts, and just get on with things.

But on a positive note, it does make you Weak Enough for God to Use.

Saturday 24 December 2011

The Greatest Gift

I recently watched a documentary on Ayrton Senna. The day he died, he was praying, and said God spoke to him. God told him that 'today, he would receive the greatest gift, God himself'.

Apart from being fairly amazing that God spoke to him in that way, it throws things into perspective. Whatever you think would be really great gifts (experiences, possessions, security, relationships, family), by far the greatest of them all is knowing God himself. It's the one gift we should treasure and pursue more than any other.

Blood, Sweat and Innovation

Watching the Mars Hill documentary was great. Just seeing how they were all complete amateurs and totally winging it. They pretty much just made it up as they went along. And they were really bold in the way they did everything. They worked really hard, had day jobs, and were prepared to be totally flat broke. Very inspiring, and a reminder that doing God's work isn't always easy or well paid.

One of the points that jumped out at me was Mark explaining that having very little finances required them to innovate. For example, they couldn't afford tape duplicators so they put their sermons online as mp3 downloads, and were one of the first churches to do so. They were also one of the first churches to have a website. They thought up the video campus as a way of overcoming the boundaries of time and space. And it was quite an eye-opener as to how ropey it was in the early days. They just learnt as they went along. Sometimes we're prone to not trying new ideas because it won't be that slick to begin with. But you have to try new things to get that momentum going.




The Expulsive Power of a New Affection

"The Puritan preacher Thomas Chaimers, in his sermon The Expulsive Power of a New Affection, said that desires for God and desires for sin cannot coexist in the human heart. They are two opposing "affections"—one will always push out the other. So, he said, "the only way to dispossess [the heart] of an old affection, is by the explosive power of a new one" (see Gal. 5:16-17). You can't just "stop it," because the it is always more than behavior. It is always rooted in your affections, in what you love—what you worship. Chalmers points the way forward: we worshiped our way into this mess, and by God's grace, we'll worship our way out."

Mike Wilkerson, Redemption, p38.
Thomas Chalmers, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection (PDF)

"But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do."

Galatians 5:16-17

Worship: Basic Human Wiring

"We reflect God's glory by our worship of him, which means to hold him as the object of our deepest desires and as worthy of our imitation. Worship is not just singing songs in church; it's how we live our lives every moment of every day–every thought, word, deed, feeling and desire. You worship what you live for, whatever is most worthy of your attention and devotion. It is what drives you at the core, and it flows from the essence of who you are.

You can't turn it off. It's your basic human wiring. To not worship is not to live. It's like a garden hose stuck on full blast. You can aim it at the grass, the car, or the shrubs, but you cannot stop its flow."

Mike Wilkerson, Redemption, p29

Remembering Death

Steve Jobs had some good wisdom. I've read numerous articles on him since he passed away a couple of months back. Here are two quotes I found that are particularly striking. I love his awareness of death – that you can't take anything with you. But it's unbelievably sad that he left this earth without knowing Jesus.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”
Steve Jobs

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
Steve Jobs

Friday 16 December 2011

A Definition of Sin

"Whatever weakens your reason, whatever impairs the tenderness of your conscience, whatever obscures your sense of God, whatever increases the authority of your body over your mind, whatever takes away from your relish for spiritual things, that to you is sin, no matter how innocent it is in itself."

Susanna Wesley (John & Charles Wesley's mother)