"Love Lustres at Calvary"

I was reading in The Valley of Vision this morning and encountered the following passage. I love the imagery and the reality to which it points.

My Father, enlarge my heart, warm my affections, open my lips,
   supply words that proclaim 'Love lustres at Calvary.'
There grace removes my burdens and heaps them on thy Son,
   made a transgressor, a curse, and sin for me;
There the sword of thy justice smote the man, thy fellow;
There thy infinite attributes were magnified,
   an infinite atonement was made;
There infinite punishment was due,
   and infinite punishment was endured. 

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Arthur Bennett, ed., Valley of Vision (Carlilse, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1975), 42.

Russell Moore on the Vulnerability of "Bible Belt Near-Christianity"

Russell Moore just posted piece entitled "Is Christianity Dying?" The post responds to the recent Pew Center report that Christianity in America is on a steep decline. As the NY Times summarizes the report, "Seventy-one percent of American adults were Christian in 2014, the lowest estimate from any sizable survey to date, and a decline of 5 million adults and 8 percentage points since a similar Pew survey in 2007."

Moore, however, notes that what is most in decline is cultural Christianity. His description and explanation of the vulnerability of "Bible Belt near-Christianity" or "Almost Christianity" in the current cultural moment is superb:

People who don’t want Christianity, don’t want almost-Christianity. . . . Almost Christianity, in the Bible Belt, looks like a God-and-Country civil religion that prizes cultural conservatism more than theological fidelity. Either way, a Christianity that reflects its culture, whether that culture is Smith College or NASCAR, only lasts as long as it is useful to its host. That’s because it’s, at root, idolatry, and people turn from their idols when they stop sending rain.[1]

I recommend reading his full post here.

Jonathan

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[1] Emphasis added.

Praying with Confidence when We Are Anything but Confident

I have been praying for wisdom lately on a number of issues. James 1:5 says, 

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

The following verses state that such a request must be made in faith without doubting. This often makes so much sense to my mind, but seems like the farthest thing from possible to my heart. After all, life is pressing in! I need direction! What should I do?! How does one pray with confidence when he or she is in the throes of the waves of doubt?

J. A. Motyer's comments on this verse bear repeating:

In conformity with his practical approach to things, there is a beautiful directness and simplicity about the teaching of James: whoever lacks wisdom can ask for it, and God will give it. Just like that! Such simplicity is either totally unrealistic, or else finds is justification in what is known about God. For James, it is the latter. His doctrine of God is such that he can afford to make large promises in his name, and to affirm that those promises will be honoured. He teaches us, first, that God’s nature it to give. He writes (literally) ‘… let him ask from the giving God …’. The requirements of English make it impossible for us to leave the words just like that, because we have to accommodate the remainder of what James writes within the framework of English grammar. But this is, in fact, how he sees God in himself: he is ‘the giving God’. No one attribute expresses all that is true about God, but each expresses something about him that is true all the time. If we speak of him as ‘gracious’ there are very many other things to say before the divine nature is fully described. Yet there is never a time when we could come to him and find that he was no longer gracious. So it is, also, when he is described as ‘the giving God’. His attributes are as infinite as he himself is, but there is no war among them: they are as perfectly one as he himself is. When we come with our prayers, he never replies, ‘Come back tomorrow. Perhaps I will then be able to be “the giving God” again, but today I must occupy myself with being something else.’ ‘Giving’ is not the whole truth, but it is ceaselessly true. He is more than ‘giving’, but he is always ‘giving.’[1]

How does one pray with confidence when he or she is in the throes of the waves of doubt? The secret, I believe, is found in looking outside ourselves. Confidence in the character of God leads to confidence in our praying. 

"I believe [Lord]; help my unbelief" (Mark 9:24).

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[1] J. A. Motyer, The Message of James (The Bible Speaks Today; ed. John R. W. Stott; Accordance electronic ed. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 38.

It Is Neither Your Graces Nor Feelings on Which Your Are to Live

As an addition to reading Scripture, I've been reading Spurgeon's Morning & Evening intermittently the last month. This morning, I read the following and wanted to share it.

First John 3:1-2 reads,

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is (1 John 3:1-2)

Commenting on the phrase "Beloved, we are God's children now," Spurgeon writes,

How is it with your heart his morning? Are you in the lowest depths of sorrow? Does corruption rise within your spirit, and grace seem like a poor spark trampled under foot? Does your faith almost fail you? Fear not, it is neither your graces nor feelings on which you are to live: you must live simply by faith on Christ. (Morning & Evening, 2/13m)

What a great reminder of the true means by which we are to live the Christian life!

P.S.--I only recently discovered this resource, but I highly recommend it. Spurgeon's writing is very poetic and falls somewhere between modern English and King James English. A modernized revision with ESV Scripture quotations of this classic has been published by Allistair Begg.