Rejoice in The New Life and Years Ahead!

"...and put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness." 

~ Ephesians 4:24

"The God of Israel will be your reward." 

~ Isaiah 52:12

"Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!

Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." 

~ Philippians 4:4-7

"He who covers a transgression seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates friends." 

~ Proverbs 17:9

"And now abide faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." 

~ 1 Corinthians 13:13

     This is a great piggyback from the previous post and a cosmic reminder for the year and subsequent lifetime ahead. I love to think about, and yes sometimes fanaticize, how the early church did 'it.' I mean, how were the prophets and believers able to get through life back then? Truth be told things were about as chaotic, messy, joyful, political and everything in between. But there is no other thing like the Word of God to remind and recalibrate the mind, body, and soul (Isaiah 40:7; 2 Timothy 3:16-17). Speaking for myself, His word is the only shoreline I'm needing to refocus on navigating my life toward without ceasing. Compared with what I know now and have been through in just the last 365 days, what I knew then and who I was then is anemic compared to today.

     The Lord will grant growth and the process will involve a little "pressure." Let's be honest, it will require quite a bit of pain, but with just the right amount of rest and comfort. As those who partake in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, our Lord never patches up our natural virtues, He remakes the whole man on the inside. Paul's clarion reminder to put on the new man is a reality where the natural human life puts on the garb that is in keeping with the new life. The life which God plants at salvation develops its own virtues, not the virtues of Adam, but of Jesus Christ. Watch how God will wither your confidence in the natural virtues of this world after sanctification, and in any power you have. The Lord does so because He wants me to learn to draw life from the reservoir of the resurrection life of Jesus Christ. "Thank God if you ae going through a drying-up season and experience." God does not build up our corrupted natural vibes, virtues, and values and transfigure them, because our natural self can never come anywhere near what Christ Jesus wants. We have to be transfigured into wanting what Christ Jesus wants.

     So, about the past, present, and future. God requires that which is past. At the end of the year we learn to turn with eagerness to all that God has in store for His future. Even though anxiety is apt to arise from what happened yesterday, it is usually tied to yesterday's sins and blunders. Equally, our present enjoyment of God's grace is also apt to be checked by the memory of His faithfulness despite our weaknesses and some idiocies in between. God's cosmic love and protection held and guided my yesterdays, and He allows the memories of them sometimes in order to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual culture for the future. God reminds us of the past lest we get into a shallow security in the present. This era of political upheaval is only one such reminder. Let me not forget, Lord. There is a lot of repenting and recalibrating to do.

     About tomorrow. Let us learn to slow down and not go out in haste. We do need to slow down. I need to slow down like for real for real. As I go forth in the coming year let it no longer be in haste and impetuous, unremembering my delight in my Father and Lord, nor with the kind of rushing of impulsive thoughtlessness, but with the patient power of knowing the God of Israel and the Universe will go before us and make a way (Zechariah 4:6; Luke 14:28). Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; as a matter of fact we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future.

Let the past sleep, but let it sleep this time in the bosom of Christ. 

Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step into the Irresistible Future with Him.

(This article is adapted from "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers, 30 & 31 December)

     

Death Rehearsal

 By John Piper

You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning: in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers. . . . So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90:5–6, 12)

             For me, the end of a year is like the end of my life. And 11:59 pm on December 31 is like the moment of my death.

The 365 days of the year are like a miniature lifetime. And these final hours are like the last days in the hospital after the doctor has told me that the end is very near. And in these last hours, the lifetime of this year passes before my eyes, and I face the inevitable question: Did I live it well? Will Jesus Christ, the righteous Judge, say “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21)?

I feel very fortunate that this is the way my year ends. And I pray that the year’s end might have the same significance for you.

The reason I feel fortunate is that it is a great advantage to have a trial run at my own dying. It is a great benefit to rehearse once a year in preparation for the last scene of your life. It is a great benefit because the morning of January 1 will find most of us still alive, at the brink of a whole new lifetime, able to start fresh all over again.

The great thing about rehearsals is that they show you where your weaknesses are, where your preparation was faulty; and they leave you time to change before the real play in front of a real audience.

I suppose for some of you the thought of dying is so morbid, so gloomy, so fraught with grief and pain that you do your best to keep it out of your minds, especially during holidays. I think that is unwise and that you do yourself a great disservice. I have found that there are few things more revolutionizing for my life than a periodic pondering of my own death.

How do you get a heart of wisdom so as to know how best to live? The psalmist answers:

          You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning: in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers. . . . So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90:5–6, 12)

Numbering your days simply means remembering that your life is short and your dying will be soon. Great wisdom — great, life-revolutionizing wisdom — comes from periodically pondering these things.

The criterion of success, that Paul used to measure his life, was whether he had kept the faith. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:7–8). Let this be our test at year’s end.

And if we discover that we did not keep the faith this past year, then we can be glad, as I am, that this year-end death is (probably) only a rehearsal, and a whole life of potential faith-keeping lies before us in the next year.

Source: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/death-rehearsal?utm_campaign=Solid+Joys&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=104897017&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8944i3NO0mtlUbbQ-ozcnBdER3Pb-EqcbVuGYOzp84HiYuG9PDv8XmtO0I2jO8k5N8DmAoRCnTZ4ciaRUaPPDzfRmy3Q&utm_content=104897017&utm_source=hs_email

What is your aim? Whose Glory is Your Goal?

What Is Your Aim?

By John Piper

Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. . . . And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (1 Corinthians 10:31; Colossians 3:17)

When you get up in the morning and you face the day, what do you say to yourself about your hopes for the day? When you look from the beginning of the day to the end of the day, what do you want to happen because you have lived?

If you say, “I don’t even think like that. I just get up and do what I’ve got to do,” then you are cutting yourself off from a basic means of grace and a source of guidance and strength and fruitfulness and joy. It is crystal clear in the Bible, including these texts, that God means for us to aim consciously at something significant in our days.

God’s revealed will for you is that when you get up in the morning, you don’t drift aimlessly through the day letting mere circumstances alone dictate what you do, but that you aim at something — that you focus on a certain kind of purpose. I’m talking about children here, and teenagers, and adults — single, married, widowed, moms, and every trade and every profession.

Aimlessness is akin to lifelessness. Dead leaves in the back yard may move around more than anything else — more than the dog, more than the children. The wind blows this way, they go this way. The wind blows that way, they go that way. They tumble, they bounce, they skip, they press against a fence, but they have no aim whatsoever. They are full of motion and empty of life.

God did not create humans in his image to be aimless, like lifeless leaves blown around in the backyard of life. He created us to be purposeful — to have a focus and an aim for all our days. What is yours today? What is yours for the new year? A good place to start is 1 Corinthians 10:31, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

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Glory Is the Goal

By John Piper

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (Romans 5:2)

Seeing the glory of God is our ultimate hope. “We rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2). God will “present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy” (Jude 24).

He will “make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory” (Romans 9:23). He “calls you into his own kingdom and glory” (1 Thessalonians 2:12). “Our blessed hope [is] the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

Jesus, in all his person and work, is the incarnation and ultimate revelation of the glory of God. “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3). “Father, I desire that they . . . may be with me where I am, to see my glory” Jesus prays in John 17:24.

“So, I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed” (1 Peter 5:1). “The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

“We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7).“This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). “Those whom he justified he also glorified” (Romans 8:30).

Seeing and sharing in God’s glory is our ultimate hope through the gospel of Christ.

Such a hope, that is really known and treasured, has a huge and decisive effect on our present values and choices and actions.

Get to know the glory of God. Study the glory of God and the glory of Christ. Study the glory of the world that reveals the glory of God, and the glory of the gospel that reveals the glory of Christ.

Treasure the glory of God in all things and above all things.

Study your soul. Know the glory you are seduced by, and know why you treasure glories that are not God’s glory.

Study your own soul to know how to make the glories of the world collapse like the pagan idol Dagon in 1 Samuel 5:4. Let all glories that distract you from the glory of God shatter in pitiful pieces on the floor of the world’s temples. Treasure the glory of God above all this world.

Source: “Solid Joys” - Daily Devotionals from John Piper. December 27 & 28, 2017, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-is-your-aim

Baptized Vessels for Righteousness

“For the death that [Christ] died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin rein in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.” (Rom 6:10-14)

Blessing comes from love and obedience...

I don't know about you but all this talk of the Ashley Madison web hack has my attention especially since a lot of influential people, especially Christians, have been publically exposed in their sins and temptations. A lot of people are raising their eyebrows in surprise. Physicists speak of the "butterfly effect," the degree to which small actions produce large consequences. The same is true spiritually. People (most importantly Christ Jesus) watch you respond to opportunities and challenges. They see the way you react (or act) in many different situations; treat those who can help you and those who cannot; the way you and I handle temptation, etc. The way you live affects not only you but the world – positively and negatively. 

There’s no doubt that our bodies act like temptation magnets. We fall into weakness so many times. Yes, that’s the case for all of us and Paul reminds us that the choices we make not only affect us but our Savior and others. Paul offers Gospel saturated perspective: "What should we say then? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may multiply? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?"

Let us stay aware, "...that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death..." and "...we were buried with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father so we too may walk in a new way of life." (Romans 6:1-4)

I was reminded one Sunday (Aug 30) to remember Christ Jesus and how He was obedient to God, and how He was subjected to terrible suffering for our redemption and restoration. As a Christian, consider Christ Jesus today...seriously, deeply, and forever...and follow Him. Jesus says in John 15, to "abide in Him" the same way a branch is attached to a vine. The closer you draw to Jesus, the closer He draws to you in very real ways. Place your trust in Jesus Christ,  and allow him to  affect your world for His glory.

May your 2016 be blessed!