03.28.09
The Puritan View of the Healthy Christian
“The healthy Christian knows his frailty and suspects and distrusts himself, lest sin and Satan should be ensnaring him unawares; therefore he regularly grills himself before God, scrutinising his deeds and motives and ruthlessly condemning himself when he finds within himself moral deficiency and dishonesty… The healthy Christian is not necessarily the extrovert, ebullient Christian, but the Christian who has a sense of God’s presence stamped deep on his soul, who trembles at God’s Word, who lets it dwell richly in him by constant meditation upon it, and who tests and reforms his life daily in response to it…
Does not this emphasis on constant self-suspicion and self-examination actually weaken faith, by diverting our gaze from Christ in his fullness to ourselves in our emptiness, so leading us to spiritual despondency and depression? No doubt it would if it were made an end in itself; but, of course, it never was. The Puritans ripped up consciences in the pulpit [particularly applying the law and exposing the pride of the human heart] and urged self-trial in the closet only in order to drive sinners to Christ and to teach them to live by faith in him.” (J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness – the Puritan View of the Christian Life, pp. 116 & 117)
Someone has said, “For every one look in, take ten looks out to Christ.” The problem today is that we don’t look in at all, or at least very little. We would see our need more if we did, and we would see the loveliness of Christ more, also – the Puritans attest that.
G.M.
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03.23.09
Like Rachel
As you no doubt have noticed, I have not only removed a considerable amount of material from this Blog, but I have also scaled back on the amount posted – particularly anything by myself. God-willing, I plan to increase the amount that goes up a bit in the coming weeks, but the vast majority of such will be from other authors. I hope to also start adding more regularly to the quote pages as well (though a few have been added in the past couple of weeks).
There are a number of reasons for such, but the fact that G.B. has not the time to post material and edit anything by me is one of the main ones. Hopefully some very interesting subjects will soon appear from other writers, but for now I hope you benefit from this short but excellent quotation:
Like Rachel
“Affection without action is like Rachel, beautiful but barren.”
John Trapp, Unknown
G.M.
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03.12.09
We Need Periods of Silence
“Total silence is rare, and what we today call ‘quiet’ usually amounts to a little less noise. Many people have never experienced silence… Our households and offices are filled with whirring, buzzing, murmuring, chattering, and whining of the multiple contraptions that are supposed to make life easier. Their noise comforts us in some curious way. In Fact, we find complete silence shocking because it leaves the impression that nothing is happening… Think what that says about the inward emptiness of our lives if we must always turn on the tape player or radio to make sure something is happening around us.”
Dallas Willard, Unknown
G.M.
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‘Will He Have None?’
“When sin should have no love, shall it have all? When Christ should have all, will He have none? How is it that you are so mistaken as to think you see beauty in deformity, and deformity in beauty itself? Why is odious sin so lovely and a precious Christ so unlovely in your eyes? Christ is so good that, as Christ, He is to be loved most of all”
From Love to Christ by Thomas Doolittle
G.M.
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03.07.09
Deep Views of Sin
The foillowing advice comes from Thomas Chalmers, one of the great early Free Church men in Scotland in the 1900’s. It is wise advice.
“You complain that you have not such deep views of sin as experienced Christians speak of; but how did they aquire them? They are the fruits of their experience in Christ, and not of their experience out of Christ. They had them not before their union with the saviour. It was on more slender conceptions of the evil of sin than they now have that they went to Christ, that they closed with him, and that they received from his sanctifying hand a more contrite spirit than before – a more tender conscience than before. Do as they did; wait not till you have got their deep sensibilities till you go to the saviour. Go to him now; go to him with your present sensibility; bring it to him as part of your disease, and he, the great physician of souls, will minister to this and all other diseases.”
Letters
G.M.
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