Trusting AND Trying

"[W]hen it comes to growth in godliness, trusting does not put an end to trying" (91). The Hole in Our Holiness ~ Kevin deYoung

"Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness."

(Psalm 37:3 ESV)

There is no resting on your laurels in the kingdom of God. There is no time behind the lines, no leave from the war--we're always in the trenches.

The Christian life is more of a Sisyphean endeavour--when we think we are getting somewhere, we are closer to falling than we would like to admit. That boulder of pride (or false humility) or anger (or repressed rage) or fear (or false confidence). . . the moment we think we have it conquered is the moment it slides back down the hill.


"So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand."

(Romans 7:21 ESV) 

Thank God for His grace. We don't have to do it ourselves.

However, we are still supposed to keep trying. We are to trust that our efforts to grow in godliness are of benefit and blessed by the Holy Spirit. 

"Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain."

(1 Corinthians 15:58 ESV)

It is how we confirm our calling and election (2 Peter 1: 9). And because we are not saved by our works, we don't have to fear our failure.

[31] What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? [32] He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? [33] Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. [34] Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. [35] Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? [36] As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”[37] No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

(Romans 8:31-37 ESV)

[3] His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, [4] by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. [5] For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, [6] and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, [7] and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. [8] For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. [9] For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. [10] Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. [11] For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

(2 Peter 1:3-11 ESV)

The Practice of Holiness

“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”
― D.A. Carson  

Holiness is not a habit. There is a reason we are called to practice spiritual discipline.

We must train ourselves in the practice of holiness. There is a reason Paul likens our lives as Christians to the training of an athlete. Athletes don't have a habit of training; they discipline themselves to train. And they don't just train for the fun of it, they have a goal in mind, a purpose.

[25] Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. [26] So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. [27] But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

(1 Corinthians 9:25-27 ESV)

Our practice of holiness is not running aimlessly; rather,  it is part of our sanctification, part of the refining process we must go through in order to become more like Christ. Being His image-bearers is not simple or easy; it takes work. Disciplining our bodies, our minds, and our spirits can be painful. As we are bent in the direction the Vinedresser wants us to grow, our branches may ache and long for release back to the way that they are naturally inclined to go. But He knows best how to tend His Vines so that they will bear the most fruit.

"For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."

(Hebrews 12:11 ESV)

Holiness requires conscious practice. It means vigilant self-examination, seeing ourselves as we truly are and identifying our sin. Speaking and confessing it, not keeping it to ourselves and hiding what we have done. We must be honest with ourselves and with God about our failures, and must pray for His grace,  that He will show us those sins we do not want to acknowledge, that He would heal us of our spiritual amnesia.

We need to be careful, however, that in our focus on personal holiness, we do not forget the goal--"holiness" without Christ is pompous and priggish Phariseeism. Navel-gazing will not make us holy. Once we look away from Christ to ourselves, we have lost sight of the goal.

True self-examination "[looks] to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God"
(Hebrews 12:2 ESV).

[6] If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. [7] Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; [8] for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. [9] The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. [10] For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.

(1 Timothy 4:6-10 ESV)

A God We Can Count On: Confessing Ps 23 "The LORD is my shepherd"

[1] The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

[2] He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters. 

[3] He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for his name's sake. 

[4] Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me. 

[5] You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows. 

[6] Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
forever.

(Psalm 23 ESV)

Psalm 23 is such a well-known passage. It gets quoted and read time and time again, in books, in movies, in times of illness, in times of trial, at funerals, etc. It has become one of those Bible passages which over-familiarity has made into a cliché.

The thing is, it shouldn't be a cliché. There is a reason that so many Christians have found comfort in these words. There is a reason that so many books and sermons and meditations have been written on and about the Twenty-Third Psalm.

It is a confession of faith in a God we can count on.

"The LORD is my shepherd."  

I was reading through this passage the other day and was struck by the fact that this passage literally says "YHWH is my shepherd";Yahweh is the name,  "I AM WHO I AM", revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:14. There is no other or better place to start in our confession but with Who God says He is. God IS. This is where we have our genesis. This is our foundation. The rest of the psalm is predicated on this first short phrase. Because "I AM WHO I AM" is our Shepherd, we can rest in His unchanging character. He is unchanging--because we are so temporal and whimsical, we cannot seem to remember this for long, but it is God's immutability that is our assurance when we look at His other attributes.

His grace is unchanging.
His faithfulness is unchanging.
His mercy is unchanging.
His holiness is unchanging.
His justice is unchanging.
His love is unchanging.

This list could continue on for pages and still--He is eternal and He does not change.

The littleness that is us cannot comprehend the magnitude of this blessing. But we can rest in the comfort that He is YHWH and He will not change.

[21] But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
[22] The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
[23] they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
[24] “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”

(Lamentations 3:21-24 ESV)

Book Talk: The Knowledge of the Holy ~ A.W. Tozer

The Knowledge of the Holy ~ A.W. Tozer

"Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning God" (Chp 1, pg 1). 

This book shows us how we can know and worship God better by learning about His attributes, defined by Tozer as "whatever God has in any way revealed as being true of Himself" (12) [italics original].

Tozer makes it clear that we must be careful to maintain a true understanding of Who God is, otherwise

"Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a God we can in some measure control. We need the feeling of security that comes from knowing what God is like, and what He is like is of course a composite of all the religious pictures we have seen, all the best people we have know or heard about, and all the sublime ideas we have entertained" (8).

 We have to be careful not to reduce God in this way because otherwise what we are worshiping is no longer God, but an image, and we have become idolators. Tozer makes this clear in his first chapter:

"Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom a libel on His character. The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is--in itself a monstrous sin--and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness" (3).

By studying the attributes of God as revealed in Scripture, we can, with the Holy Spirit's help, worship the true God, not our own idols of Him.

      "An attribute . . . is not a part of God. It is how God is, and as fair as the reasoning mind can go, we may say that it is what God is, though, as I have tried to explain, exactly what He is He cannot tell us. . . .

      The divine attributes are what we know to be true of God. He does not possess them as qualities; they are how God is as He reveals Himself to His creatures. Love, for instance, is not something God has and which may grow or diminish or cease to be. His love is the way God is, and when He loves He is simply being Himself." (16).

This is a short, but very, very sweet book. Tozer's living relationship with God comes out in every line and continually points the Christian to Him. A true blessing to read!

Gleanings: The Pursuit of Christ

"[Union with Christ] reminds us that the pursuit of holiness is also the pursuit of Christ. We aren't interesting in being virtuous just to be good people. Our first love is Jesus. Holiness is not ultimately about living up to a moral standard. It's about living in Christ and living out of our real, vital union with him" (98). [my emphasis]

Kevin deYoung, The Hole in our Holiness 

Gleanings: Positional Holiness and Process Holiness

"In Christ every believer has a once-for-all positional holiness, and from this new identity every Christian is commanded to grow in the ongoing-for-your-whole-life process of holiness (Phil. 2:12-13)."
~Kevin deYoung, The Hole in Our Holiness

Gleanings: The Holiness Gap

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mind-the-gap.jpg

There is a gap between our love from the gospel and our love from godliness. This must change. It's not pietism, legalism, or fundamentalism to take holiness seriously. It's the way of all those who have been called to a holy calling by a holy God.

Kevin deYoung, The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap 

between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness