Entry #4 - The Challenges That Be

1. To avoid the absorption of ungodly ways of thinking:


-That sin is anything other than completely offensive to God, that sin is anything other than idolatry every time, and that God is anything less than all-satisfying at all times.
-That a physically attractive woman is more valuable than a godly woman.
-That pride is fundamental to being a man (and not wicked), and that pride is anything less than self-worship and hell-worthy.


2. To pursue God unhindered:


-By any lack of faith in Him, the value of His Word, the power of His Spirit, or His vindication.
-By sinful investments in the flesh.
-By disorganized finances.
-By lazy, undisciplined living.
-By a silenced conscience.


3. To pursue God Himself:


-In prayer;
-In the study of, wrestling with, memorization of and submission to His Word;
-In repentance and confession;
-In verbal, written, and benevolent expressions of His supreme value.

Entry #3 - The Glory of God & Sanctification

"But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit." 2nd Corinthians 3:18

The work that God is doing in us is more than just helping us to sin less. In fact, it's also more than just helping us to do good things. The transforming work God is doing in us TRANSCENDS our behavior.

Have you ever attempted to set up some system of godliness in your life, to remove some particular sin, and found that you came up empty? Not just failing your system, but empty?

We're getting closer when we speak of and pursue God's changing work in our hearts. But the sad thing is that a lot of us stop there. We want God to make us a "good person" rather than a "bad person". How tame and uninspiring!

Here's the secret--not some underground tip, but what should never have left the forefront of our attention--The transformation God works in us is centered on His magnificent glory.

Of course you came up empty in your behavior-based pursuits of "holiness". Look at the passage above (2 Cor 3:18) and observe these truths about sanctification:

-Sanctification takes place while "beholding...the glory of the Lord"

-Sanctification transforms us into a particular image (the image of Christ)

-Sanctification is a process of increasing glory ("from glory to glory")

-Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit ("just as from the Lord, the Spirit")

Sanctification is not primarily the absence of something but primarily the greater presence of something. That "something" is the glory of God. The glory of God is the inspiring reality that spurs us on, it is the power from which transformation happens, and it is displayed in us as the result of sanctification. That is sanctification.

And sinning less? Of course. But how does that occur?

"For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." -Romans 8:13

Keep the glory of God at the center of everything; what you value, what you love, what you hate, what you pursue. We are not called to impersonal moralism but called, through the Gospel, to enjoy the God of glory.

Entry #2 - Who is Sufficient?

It's one full week since the previous entry. Distractions and undiscipline have abounded since then during the Christmas build-up and I am feeling very weak. In 2 Corinthians 2:15-16 Paul describes the weightiness of Gospel service, of being the aroma of Christ, which is the smell of life to those who are being saved, but the smell of death to those who are perishing. He asks rhetorically, "Who is sufficient for these things?"

The incredible nature of the spiritual warfares and realities going on around us are simply beyond us. We are weak, we are finite, we are sinners. Very easily I got caught up in other things and have realized my own insufficiency to write a blog called "the reality of Christ" by my own diminished sense of said reality.

But this is how God calls us to walk, sufficient not in ourselves but in Him.

Entry #1 - Why this blog?

There's a mission statement/description at the top of the page. But I would like to share what triggered this.

First of all, certain burdens lay on my heart. They come from all different directions but ultimately (I believe) from God. Some of them relate to arising thought patterns (and heart postures) that I see in all different parts of the country (And I have lived in 4 states in the last 6 years). Some of them come from a desire to know how to respond properly. Some of it is an awareness of my own wicked heart, wicked tendencies, and desire to put those tendencies to death. But all of these burdens have one overarching desire: The desire to live engaged in the reality of Christ.

We read about Isaiah seeing a vision of God, and of seraphim, and his horror at this because of the unclean lips of both him and the people he dwells among. We read of Peter's extreme discomfort when first realizing who Jesus was (and Peter's statement, "I am a sinful man"). We read of the fierce boldness and the extreme self-forgetting love of the earliest church in Acts. We are told that they were simultaneously saturated in both the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit.

Finally, I do some research and read about Jonathan Edwards weeping for an entire service while George Whitefield visited his church in Northampton, Massachusetts and reminded the congregation there about the revival they had experienced a few years prior.

In all these accounts, I see men and women living in the reality of Christ. It's a reality that I want and seek to live in. It is the glorious reality that the Church is called to live in. This is what drives me and this is what burdens me. In my opinion, the general trends that are popular right now have nothing to do with the reality of Christ. They are based on increasing the number of converts, but with an unbiblical definition of what a convert is, due to a lack of interest in real theology. We have no interest in the fear of the Lord because we've dismissed it as an old-fashioned, barbaric notion. And with that the comfort of the Holy Spirit seems to mean very little.

I want to love. I want to be bold. I want to fear. I want to be comforted. I want to weep. Not in a program, a method, or an emotional cleansing, but with my soul immersed and aware in the reality of Christ.