Here is some great advice for us from the “doctor” Martin Lloyd Jones about how we are to live the Christian life. I encourage you to take some time and consider this “prescription.”

“There is nothing that is so calculated to promote holiness as the realization that we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, that our destiny is certain and secure, that nothing can prevent it. Realizing that, we purify ourselves even as He is pure, and we feel that there is no time to waste. That is the way to live the Christian life!

Do not turn it into a law, but realize that you have received the Holy Spirit. Then work out this theme. Your Father is watching over you. He is looking after you – yes, let me use scriptural language – He is jealous concerning you because you belong to Him. You belong to Christ, you are His brother. The Holy Spirit is dwelling in your very body and you are destined for glory.”

Now, go and read Romans 8 and see with what authority he makes this claim.

Here is a prayer from the Valley of Vision that should encourage and uplift you in the midst of this week.

Everlasting Creator-Father,

I have destroyed myself,

my nature is defiled,

the powers of my soul are degraded;

I am vile, miserable, strengthless,

but my hope is in thee.

If ever I am saved it will be by goodness

undeserved and astonishing,

not by mercy alone but by abundant mercy,

not by grace but by exceeding riches of grace;

And such thou hast revealed, promised, exemplified

in thoughts of peace, not of evil.

Thou hast devised means

to rescue me from sin’s perdition,

to restore me to happiness, honour, safety.

I bless thee for the everlasting covenant,

for the appointment of a Mediator.

I rejoice that he failed not, nor was discouraged,

but accomplished the work thou gavest him

to do;

and said on the cross, ‘It is finished.’

I exult in the thought that

thy justice is satisfied,

thy truth established,

thy law magnified,

and a foundation is laid for my hope.

I look to a present and personal interest

in Christ and say,

Surely he has borne my griefs,

carried my sorrows,

won my peace,

healed my soul.

Justified by his blood I am saved by his life,

Glorying in his cross I bow to his sceptre,

Having his Spirit I possess his mind.

Lord, grant that my religion may not be

occasional and partial,

but universal, influential, effective,

and may I always continue in thy words

as well as thy works,

so that I may reach my end in peace.

In lieu of having time to write a longer post, I came across this quote by J.I. Packer that I thought would be great to share with you. Take some to time to read and meditate on the the awesome thought that “our sins have been punished…but on Jesus.” Have a great day.

“Our sins have been punished; the wheel of retribution has turned; judgment has been inflicted for our ungodliness – but on Jesus, the lamb of God, standing in our place. In this way God is just – and the justifier of those who put faith in Jesus, who ‘was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification’ (Romans 4:25).”

Here is an old favorite. I especially love the third stanza. Take some time and meditate on that one and have a blessed Lord’s day!

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees.
When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation,
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.
Then I shall bow, in humble adoration,
And then proclaim: “My God, how great Thou art!”

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

After a long couple of weeks, I feel that we could all use a good laugh. Again, I will turn to Tim Hawkins who I was introduced to through Kevin DeYoung’s blog. My father-in-law told me about this one and if you haven’t see it yet, it is worth the 3 minutes. Enjoy! Have a great weekend.

About a year ago or more, I made my way over to an older woman in my church and tried to establish a relationship with her.  I began by asking her how she was doing.   All I can say is ,wow, did she ever tell me!  Her short answer was, “Not very well.”  The long answer she actually gave me is way, way too long to post here, but I’ll try to summarize: her husband was difficult to put up with and she didn’t know if she could stand him anymore, her health was bad, her finances were bad, her life was bad, she was depressed and bored and so on and so on…  And I am by no means able to do justice to the tone of voice and attitude in which she conveyed this to me.  I was totally shocked.  There was no reference to God in her conversation with respect to her circumstances at all.  How could this older woman, who had been a Christian for over thirty years talk like this?  I couldn’t believe it.  Well, she obviously took my gesture of friendship seriously, or she was simply desperate to vent her feelings to someone.  For after that, every Sunday she managed to make her way over to me and recite the same weary litany.  My shock soon turned to sarcasm.  Not out loud to her, of course, but inwardly I became very cynical.  Then I started to try to avoid her, though somehow that never seemed to work.   But this week, by God’s gracious working in my heart, I felt something I had not felt previously – genuine compassion.    As I listened to her this week, this thought ran through my mind:  “You too, Jessica, you too, are just like this.  Deep down in your soul, where no other person hears or sees, you grumble, you complain, and you act without reference to God a dozen times a day.   Maybe not in the obnoxious outward way this woman does, but what does that matter?  You are the same sinner that she is and have need of the same Savior that she needs.”   And I thought she was the only one being self-righteous, coming to church all these years  and then talking like she did!  How the ugly sin of self-righteousness subtly works in our hearts!   Thank God I am not like that, we say.   But we are all like that. Therefore, I could feel pity toward her sinful, fallen condition because mine was the same.

Michael Horton says in Christless Christianity: “We do not preach ourselves, but Christ.  The good news – not only for ourselves, but for a world (and church) in desperate need of good news -is that what we say preaches better than our lives, at least if what we are saying is Christ’s person and work rather than our own.  The more we talk about Christ as the Bible’s unfolding mystery and less about our own transformation, the more likely we are actually to be transformed rather than self-righteous or despairing.  As much as it goes against our grain, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation…  Yes, there is hypocrisy, and because Christians will always be simultaneously saint and sinner, there will always be hypocrisy in every Christian and in every church.  The good news is that Christ saves us from hypocrisy too.”

The woman in my church needs to hear the good news.  Fortunately, she is in a church that preaches it every Sunday.  I can only pray that the Spirit will do His work in her heart.  But she is not the only one who needs to hear the good news of the gospel.  I do too.  Christ is the good news.  He is the gospel.  Not the woman in my church.  And not me.

First, I have to add to John’s post that the Bolton Conference was a tremendous spiritual blessing to me this year.  It was definitely used of God to grow me in grace and knowledge.  Perhaps I’ll post some more about it some other time.

Next, I must express my child-like excitement and delight in all the brand, new books that John and I have bought or received in the last week.  It’s been like Christmas!  Actually it’s been better than Christmas, because at Christmas I inevitably get something I could care less about, like a sweater that doesn’t fit or a kitchen appliance I will never use.  But books!  Ahh!   Okay, so I admit we indulged a little at the conference ,though not quite as much as my dear friend, Christine, who informed me she might just need a part time job to cover her stash!    But along with the books we purchased at Bolton, John also received a gift from a friend in our care-group as a thank you.  The book was The Reason for God by Timothy Keller.  Well,I didn’t know where to begin with all our new books.  It was like letting Andrew loose in a candy store.   But, since John just so happened to be rather busy with all the other books he had going and I had no idea which of my new ones to start, I thought I’d read a book of his before he got to it.  So I picked up Keller’s, A Reason for God. What a wonderful surprise!  I am not always enthusiastic about modern authors, but in Keller I think I may have found a kindred spirit.  Why?  Well, first of all, he is a student of C.S. Lewis, as am I, and Lewis’s spirit hovers on practically every page.  Literally, for Keller quotes Lewis frequently and extensively.   Second of all,  Keller, like Lewis, has learned the art of engaging the mind, while still touching the heart.  This is very important to me.  When I read a book in which my whole purpose is that God may use it as a means of growth in my life, I want not only think deep thoughts, but to cry, even sometimes weep for wonder and joy.  I want my heart to ache with love and longing, and at the same time to know and understand why my heart aches and Who it aches for.    Reading Scripture, preaching – like the good preaching I am privileged to hear in my own church or that I heard at the Bolton conference, reading poetry or imaginative literature does this for me, but I must confess that depending on the author, many modern theology/Christian growth books do not.  Listening to preaching is very different than the visual experience of reading, so I attribute this to the fact that I must like books that read like someone is talking,  as if I can hear in my mind, the passion and expression in the very words.  Anyways, Keller does this in my opinion quite well, and as any bibliophile knows, one has to share the discovery of a new author.  So let me close with two quotes I read last night and perhaps you’ll get a glimpse of why I am enjoying my discovery.

“There may be no greater inner agony than the loss of a relationship we desperately want.  If a mild acquaintance turns on you, condemns and criticizes you, and says she never wants to see you again, it is painful.  If someone you’re dating does the same thing, it is qualitatively more painful.  But if your spouse does this to you, or if one of your parents does this to you when you’re still a child, the psychological damage is infinitely worse.  We cannot fathom, however, what it would be like to lose not just a spousal or parental love that has lasted several years, but the infinite love of the Father that Jesus had from all eternity.  Jesus’s sufferings would have been eternally unbearable.  Christian theology has always recognized that Jesus bore, as the substitute on our place, the endless exclusion from God that the human race has merited.”   From chapter two – How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?

” For a love relationship to be healthy there must be a mutual loss of independence.  It can’t be just one way.  Both sides must say to the other, ‘I will adjust to you.  I will change for you.  I’ll serve you even though it means a sacrifice for me.’  If only one party does all the sacrificing and giving, and the other does all the ordering and taking, the relationship will be exploitative and will oppresss and distort the lives of both people.  At first sight then, a relationship with God seems inherently dehumanizing.  Surely it will have to be ‘one way,’  God’s way…I must adjust to God, there is no way God could adjust to and serve me…it is not true in Christianity.  In the most radical way, God has adjusted to us – in his incarnation and atonement.  In Jesus Christ, he became a limited human being, vulnerable to suffering and death.  On the cross, he submitted to our condition -as sinners – and died in our place to forgive us.  In the most profound way, God has said to us in Christ, ‘I will adjust to you.  I will change for you.”  From Chapter 3, Christianity is a Straitjacket

I apologize to any who may be tired of hearing about the life of Calvin as it seems every time you turn around someone is doing a conference, releasing a book, or writing a blog post about him this year. Yet that is what the Bolton Conference was on this year as well. So please bear with us a little bit as we share some of the things that caught our attention from the various sessions we heard.

The first session of the recent Bolton Conference was more of a lecture on who Calvin was. One of the things that is most interesting in all of this talk of John Calvin this year, in celebration of his 500th birthday, is that he would have hated the attention. As I have read this before, it was again pointed out during the conference, that it was not because he was shy and didn’t want to be around people, rather, he would want God to receive all of the praise and the honor and the glory. This is what Calvin took most seriously, that God be glorified in everything. Calvin lived it, after all it was at his insistence that he was buried in an unmarked grave. He wanted no memorial or marker to Him; he wanted all the glory to go to God alone as he understood that God’s glory is not to be shared. He also deeply understood what the apostle Paul said in I Corinthians 15:10, “But by the grace of God, I am what I am.” Calvin knew that it was only by God’s grace that he was brought to this time and to this place to be used of God however He saw fit. Calvin was a genius, there is no doubt about it; but as we see that genius in Him, we see the glory of God and that is how Calvin would want and that is what Calvin would want us to celebrate. While there is no marker for anyone to commemorate, Calvin did leave us volumes of literature from letters to commentaries to his greatest legacy, the Institutes. Calvin’s influence which helped shape the battle that was the Protestant Reformation lives in on in the works of his that have survived to this day. May we all live as Calvin did, not to emulate the man, but to follow the example of the man as he followed Christ.

It was a great conference, and I know that I am not coming close to doing any justice to the job that Ligon Duncan did in presenting Calvin the Reformer.

I mentioned earlier that we were going to the Bolton Conference this past weekend. Well, we did, and we will be writing about some of what we learned in the coming days. In the meantime, I just wanted to address the fact that we went and had a wonderful time. The Bolton Conference is put on by a group known as the New England Reformed Fellowship (NERF). They have had this conference going since 1985 and have had many of the speakers seen at all the other conferences over this time as well as some, at least to us, who are lesser known. This year they had a man involved with the Banner of Truth, also a pastor in London, named Mark Johnston; and they also had Ligon Duncan of 1st Presbyterian in Jackson Mississippi. Surprise of surprises, the conference was on Calvin. It was John Calvin, Reformer and the Reformation of the Church. Both speakers did a great job and were well prepared on their subjects, which we will get into more later. As it has proved each year we have gone (3) the conference was very refreshing and encouraging. One of the other highlights of this conference has always been the book table that is supplied by a bookstore out of New York called Westminster Discount Book Service. They provide table after table of excellent books from the old classics to the modern works of today. This year I was able to add to my Thomas Watson collection (plus 3), Jess added a David Wells book to the shelf, and Andrew got a new George MacDonald book that he has already finished. As you know, if you have read our blog regularly, this makes the whole trip worth it. Well, as I said, we will fill you on some of the more important details of the speaking aspect of the conference in the coming days.

Mark it on your calendar, next year–October 22-23, 2010–speakers are scheduled to be Derek Thomas and Joel Beeke, and Lord willing the book table will be back as well.