Spring and sanctification: both are inevitable!

Elisha notes spring is inevitable

“This has been the week when the color of life has changed. We have been watching closely, knowing it was coming. A few days ago buds were forming on the trees, and branches, though still brown, had subtly changed shape as bud concealed blossom. Every spring, though expectant, there is always the delight of one day waking up, looking out, and life has changed color.

What yesterday was barren is today fresh, green, flowering, altogether new.

I was commenting to a neighborhood friend that even though I always know spring is coming and the process has begun, it always seems so sudden when the landscape changes and, one day, the trees are adorned in flowering buds. “Well,” my friend mused, “it was never a question of if, it was always a question of when.”

My mind replayed her words. It was never a question of if, it was always a question of when.

And this is, according to Elisha, an analogy about “The Inevitability of Sanctification“

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Measuring our growth

If I have observed anything by experience, it is this: a man may take the measure of his growth and decay in grace according to his thoughts and meditations upon the person of Christ, and the glory of Christ’s kingdom, and of His love.

— John Owen A Golden Treasury of Puritan Devotion,  ed. Mariano Di Gangi 

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A Prayer for a Fresh Panting after Jesus

From Scripture:

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. Ps. 63:1-5

From Scotty Smith

Dear Lord Jesus, we come before you today wanting to be schooled afresh in pant-theology—asking for the gift panting after you, desiring you, wanting you more than anything or anyone, else in history or the cosmos. Renew and intensify our thirst for you. Make us so faint that unless you hydrate our hearts with the gospel, we will surely perish.

It’s a dangerous thing to no longer deeply crave fellowship with you, Jesus. It’s a deceptive thing to enjoy but no longer actually need you. It’s a deceitful thing to be satisfied with correct theology about you, without experiencing rich communion with you. It’s a demonic thing to find our ultimate satisfaction in anyone or anything else but you.

Lord Jesus, only your steadfast love is better than life, Jesus—only your contra-conditional, irrepressible affection for us. Nothing else will do. You have created a gospel-shaped vacuum in our hearts—a screaming empty place that fits only you. Forgive us when we try to cram human love or creature comforts, cultural acclaim or family reputation, or anything else into that place. Don’t let us be too easily satisfied. Give us redemptive discontent until our hearts rest again in you.

Lord Jesus, we’re asking this not just for ourselves as individuals, but for our churches as well. Forgive us when we get so organized, creative, and “right” that we no longer miss your presence. Is it really you we are worshiping, or are we just worshiping worship? Is it really you we are serving, or are we just serving ourselves as religious consumers? Are we really delighting in you, or just enjoying ourselves?

If you actually “left the house,” how long would it take before we knew the difference? In all honesty, Jesus, how much of what we do in our churches doesn’t require the Holy Spirit at all? Show us, convict us, forgive us, and change us.

Let us see and experience your power and glory in fresh ways, Lord Jesus. We want to lift our hearts, voices, hands, and whole lives to you, as a sacrifice of praise and as an expression of the joy that fills our hearts.

Who do we have in heaven but you, Lord Jesus? And being with you makes all other delights and desires seem as empty nothings. May the truth and grace of the gospel satisfy us as fat and rich food. So very Amen we pray, with longing and expectant hearts.

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8 Ways to grow in godliness

Joe Thorn (whom I slightly revised) who summarized them from Thomas Watson’s, The Godly Man’s Picture.

1. Use the spiritual disciplines including those including those related to Scripture intake, prayer, corporate worship, and more.
2. Love the world
3. Set your mind on things above
4. Guard your heart
5. Use your time well for all things
6. Consider that your life is a vapor
7. Make this your maxim:  godliness is your purpose
8. Surround yourself with godly people

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Why holiness matters now

“If you dislike a holy God now, why would you want to be with him forever? If worship does not capture your attention at present, what makes you think it will thrill you in some heavenly future? If ungodliness is your delight here on earth, what will please you in heaven, where all is clean and pure? You would not be happy there if you are not holy here. Or as Spurgeon put it, “Sooner could a fish live upon a tree than the wicked in Paradise.”

~Kevin DeYoung~The Hole in Our Holiness (Wheaton, IL; Crossway Books; 2012) p. 15

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Holiness requires personal responsibility

“I ask. . .whether it is wise to speak of faith as the one thing needful, and the only thing required, as many seem to do now-a-days in handling the doctrine of sanctification?—Is it wise to proclaim in so bald, naked, and unqualified a way as many do, that the holiness of converted people is by faith only, and not at all by personal exertion? Is it according to the proportion of God’s Word? I doubt it. . . .Surely the Scriptures teach us that in following holiness the true Christian needs personal exertion and work as well as faith.”

–J. C. Ryle, Holiness, p. xi

Will you personally exert yourself today to fight against sin?

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A little more like Jesus today

What if every day, we just started off praying like this, “Lord, make me a little more like your Son today!”?  Wouldn’t that be a great request?  I was challenged to do so after reading Jonathan Parnell’s article on sanctification which ends like this:

Christian, you will be like Jesus one day (1 John 3:2). The perishable will be overcome by the imperishable and you will bear his image with untarnished glory (1 Corinthians 15:53). He who began a good work in you will complete it (Philippians 1:6). As sure as God is God, he will finish his work. And until that day comes we don’t twiddle our thumbs and opt out of the journey. “Look,” Calvin tells us, “toward our mark with sincere simplicity and aspire to our goal.”

Every day the Father gives us another opportunity to make a little progress here, to have a little more of Jesus here. It is another day that he has created — and in which he has made us to exist — so that we will know what one more degree of glory is like in this world. He has reconciled us to himself in Christ and “in him has stamped for us the likeness to which we would have us conform” (686). Though he’ll consummate this conformity in the future, we live now to this end — a little more Jesus today than yesterday. Then more tomorrow. And then more.

O God, give me a little more of your Son today.

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On straying and praying

Do you pray for your straying soul?

I do. Daily.

The soul is always in motion. If you think yours is motionless, you are probably floating downstream.

Daily the soul is lured to other treasures, other satisfactions, other rewards besides Jesus and his way. Jesus taught us to pray daily, “forgive us for these wanderings and lead us not into, but out of, them.”

So, how do you pray for your straying soul if you believe in God’s sovereign will to bring back his wayward ones? For many years I have taken my cue from Jeremiah 31:18.

You have disciplined me, and I was disciplined, like an untrained calf; cause me to return and I will return, for you are the Lord, my God.

Similarly, Lamentations 5:21.

Cause us to return to yourself, O Lord, and we will return! Renew our days as of old.

These are my translations to make clear that the same Hebrew word is behind both verbs: “Cause me to return.” And “I will return.” The first one is the causal form of the verb, while the second one is the declarative form. If God causes me to return, I will return.

That is the way I believe. And that is the way I pray. I invite you to join me. This is how perseverance happens.

–John Piper

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Holiness: for your benefit and others

“I need to grow in holiness not just for my own sake but out of love and concern for those around me. If I love the people in my church, I will grow in holiness for their sake. I am prone to think that holiness is an individual pursuit, but when I see sanctification as a community project, now it is more of a team pursuit. I am growing in holiness so that I can help others grow in holiness, I am putting sin to death so I can help others put sin to death. My church needs me and I need my church, and this is exactly how God has designed it.”–Tim Challies

Read more in this short article “Sanctification is a Community Project”

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It’s here

A book long anticipated is now available.  It’s Kevin DeYoung’s The Hole in Our Holiness.

A description:

The hole in our holiness is that we don’t seem to care much about holiness. Or, at the very least, we don’t understand it. And we all have our reasons too: Maybe the pursuit of holiness seems legalistic. Maybe it feels like one more thing to worry about in your already overwhelming life. Maybe the emphasis on effort in the Christian life appears unspiritual. Or maybe you’ve been trying really hard to be holy and it’s just not working! Whatever the case, the problem is clear: too few Christians look like Christ and too many don’t seem all that concerned about it.

This is a book for those of us who are ready to take holiness seriously, ready to be more like Jesus, ready to live in light of the grace that produces godliness. This is a book about God’s power to help us grow in personal holiness and to enjoy the process of transformation.

Available at a great price here.

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