Spurgeon on Delighting in God

“Delight thyself also in the Lord.”
- Psa 37:4

"The teaching of these words must seem very surprising to those who are strangers to vital godliness, but to the sincere believer it is only the inculcation of a recognized truth. The life of the believer is here described as a delight in God, and we are thus certified of the great fact that true religion overflows with happiness and joy. Ungodly persons and mere professors never look upon religion as a joyful thing; to them it is service, duty, or necessity, but never pleasure or delight. If they attend to religion at all, it is either that they may gain thereby, or else because they dare not do otherwise. The thought of delight in religion is so strange to most men, that no two words in their language stand further apart than “holiness” and “delight.” But believers who know Christ, understand that delight and faith are so blessedly united, that the gates of hell cannot prevail to separate them. They who love God with all their hearts, find that his ways are ways of pleasantness, and all his paths are peace. Such joys, such brimful delights, such overflowing blessednesses, do the saints discover in their Lord, that so far from serving him from custom, they would follow him though all the world cast out his name as evil. We fear not God because of any compulsion; our faith is no fetter, our profession is no bondage, we are not dragged to holiness, nor driven to duty. No, our piety is our pleasure, our hope is our happiness, our duty is our delight."
"Delight and true religion are as allied as root and flower; as indivisible as truth and certainty; they are, in fact, two precious jewels glittering side by side in a setting of gold."

“‘Tis when we taste thy love,
Our joys divinely grow,
Unspeakable like those above,
And heaven begins below.”

-C.H. Spurgeon from his Morning & Evening devotional

Justified!!

This is the good news!

Read on...

God Is for Us: Christ Obeyed and DiedAn Excerpt from the Conclusion to the Upcoming Book, The Future of Justification
By John Piper June 13, 2007

Our only hope for living the radical demands of the Christian life is that God is totally for us now and forever. Therefore, God has not ordained that living the Christian life should be the basis of our hope that God is for us. That basis is the death and righteousness of Christ, counted as ours through faith alone. All the punishment required of us because of our sin, Christ endured for us on the cross. And all the obedience that God required of us, that he, as our Father, might be completely for us and not against us forever, Christ has performed for us in his perfect obedience to God.

This punishment and this obedience (not all obedience) is completed and past. It can never change. Our union with Christ and the enjoyment of these benefits is secure forever. Through faith alone, God establishes our union with Christ. This union will never fail, because in Christ, God is for us as an omnipotent Father who sustains our faith and works all things together for our everlasting good. The one and only instrument through which God preserves our union with Christ is faith in Christ—the purely receiving act of the soul.

The Place of Our Good Works in God’s Purposes
Our own works of love do not create or increase God’s being for us as a Father committed to bringing us everlasting joy in his presence. That fatherly commitment to be for us in this way was established once for all through faith and union with God’s Son. In his Son, the perfection and punishment required of us are past and unchangeable. They were performed by Christ in his obedience and death. They cannot be changed or increased in sufficiency or worth.
Our relationship with God is with One who has become for us as an omnipotent Father committed to working all things together for our everlasting enjoyment of him. This relationship was established at the point of our justification when God removed his judicial wrath from us, and imputed the obedience of his Son to us, and counted us as righteous in Christ, and forgave all our sins because he had punished them in the death of Jesus.

Therefore, the function of our own obedience, flowing from faith--that is, our own good works produced as the fruit of the Holy Spirit—is to make visible the worth of Christ and the worth of his work as our substitute-punishment and substitute-righteousness. God’s purpose in the universe is not only to be infinitely worthy but to be displayed as infinitely worthy. Our works of love, flowing from faith, are the way Christ-embracing faith shows the value of what it has embraced. The sacrifices of love for the good of others show the all-satisfying worth of Christ as the One whose blood and righteousness establishes the fact that God is for us forever.
All the benefits of Christ—all the blessings that flow from God being for us and not against us—rest on the redeeming work of Christ as our Substitute. If God is for us, who can be against us? With this confidence—that God is our omnipotent Father and is committed to working all things together for our everlasting joy in him—we will love others. God has so designed and ordered things that invisible faith, which embraces Christ as infinitely worthy, gives rise to acts of love that make the worth of Christ visible. Thus, our sacrifices of love do not have any hand in establishing the fact that God is completely for us, now and forever. It’s the reverse: The fact that God is for us establishes our sacrifices of love. If he were not totally for us, we would not persevere in faith and would not therefore be able to make sacrifices of love.
Our mindset toward our own good works must always be: These works depend on God being totally for us. That’s what the blood and righteousness of Christ have secured and guaranteed forever. Therefore, we must resist every tendency to think of our works as establishing or securing the fact that God is for us forever. It is always the other way around. Because he is for us, he sustains our faith. And through that faith-sustaining work, the Holy Spirit bears the fruit of love.

Avoiding the Double Tragedy
There would be a double tragedy in thinking of our works of love as securing the fact that God is completely for us. Not only would we obscure the very reason these works exist—namely, to display the beauty and worth of Christ, whose blood and righteousness is the only and all-sufficient guarantee that God is for us—but we would also undermine the very thing that makes the works of love possible—namely, the assurance that God is totally for us, from which flows the freedom and courage to make the sacrifices of love.

Our obedience does not add to the perfection and beauty and all-sufficiency of Christ’s obedience in securing the reality that God is for us; it displays that perfection and beauty and all-sufficiency. Our works of love are as necessary as God’s purpose to glorify himself. That is, they are necessary because God is righteous—he has an eternal and unwavering commitment to do the ultimately right thing: to make the infinite value of his Son visible in the world.

Paul's Prayers II

I ran across this great article on the example of Paul's prayers written by Ron Julian way back in 1996. This is great stuff. Paul's prayers, not to mention the prayers of other saints in the Bible, are a great example that we should learn to follow.

The Prayers of Paul
by Ron Julian

In one sense, prayer is the simplest thing in the world. People have been talking to God from the beginning, without instruction and without method. We have praised Him, cursed Him, begged Him, and bargained with Him. We tell Him to send the rains, heal the sick, give us jobs, prove He exists, and explain Himself. We do this naturally, artlessly, because we feel like it. There is nothing complicated about such prayer.

The Bible, however, speaks of prayer in ways that are far from simple. The Lord's Prayer, that model of brevity, has generated enough commentaries to fill libraries, and for good reason. Jesus and the other biblical authors saw prayer as more than just talking to God; prayer is an expression, a reflection, of our hearts. In the Bible, admonitions to pray are really admonitions to embrace the truth: about God, our neighbor, our world, ourselves. Do we know our real problem? Do we know who can fix it? Do we know what is truly valuable and worth having? If we do, then our prayers will reflect this.

The prayers of the apostle Paul are a wonderful example of Christian maturity expressed through prayer. In most of the letters he wrote, Paul included a prayer for his readers. Paul's prayers are touching, profound, eloquent, and loving; in addition, however, they are a guide to us in our own journey of faith. Paul's heart was fixed on the essential things, things which are true and important and indispensable. Paul's prayers, then, become a mirror in which we can examine ourselves, asking whether our concerns are anywhere close to Paul's.
In what follows I haven't the space or inclination to make interpretive arguments concerning these passages. I want to paint with a broad brush, reminding us of the great truths contained in the prayers of Paul.

THE EYES OF YOUR HEART
We who follow Jesus call ourselves "believers"; one of the striking things about Paul's prayers is his fervent desire that believers would believe, deeply and truly.

"Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus; that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ... Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:5-6, 13)"

Paul asks the God who gives perseverance, encouragement, and hope to impart these great gifts to His people. Several important ideas emerge from Paul's prayer:

1) There is joy to be found as a Christian, but it is joy "in believing." We rejoice because we believe God's promises, in spite of the difficulties we may experience today. Ours is not the joy that arises from easy circumstances; ours is the joy that arises from an unshakable hope. It is the opposite of despair.

2) Paul's basic concern in Romans 14 and 15 is that Christians accept each other, in spite of their differences. His teaching is not merely ethical, however; he is not just saying, "Be nice to each other." As Paul sees it, Christian unity arises out of a deep and profound belief planted in each individual heart. For us to be of one mind, each of us must first have our minds turned in the same way, the right way. As each of us comes to embrace the gospel, putting the full weight of our hopes on the promises of God, we will come to see each other differently. You and I are on the same journey, with the same glorious destination. Whatever may divide us, if we have truly invested our lives in the gospel, then we are in this together. As we come to know the truth, we come to know each other as comrades in belief.

3) Therefore Paul prays that God would deepen our faith so that we might rejoice in the truth together. Clearly and unambiguously, Paul lays the responsibility for producing such joy at the feet of God Himself. He prays "that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." God Himself clears our minds to believe in His coming kingdom of righteousness: He strengthens us to persevere in our belief; He comforts and encourages through our belief. Belief, encouragement, perseverance, hope; these represent our great need in this life, and Paul knows that only God can give them.

I cannot tell you how encouraging this is to me. Despair is an enemy I have battled many times, and I have absolutely no confidence in my ability to win that war. Paul's prayer tells me that the battle is not mine to win. In the midst of my struggles, it is God who will strengthen and encourage me. That joyful hope then becomes the bond which joins me to others with that same hope. Many Christians today are obsessed with miraculous healings, miraculous wealth, miraculous laughter, miraculous fainting spells. Well, here is a true miracle: blind, self-centered people like us coming to believe the truth and loving each other because of it.

One of the greatest of all Paul's prayers is found in Ephesians:

"...making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe... (Ephesians 1:16-19)"

Of all the phrases Paul ever wrote, this one phrase resonates with me like almost nothing else: "that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened." That is exactly what I want: the eyes of my heart to be enlightened. It is not enough to hear the gospel and say, "OK, I'll buy that." I want to see it for the hope that it is. I want to understand that my inheritance is rich beyond measure. I want to know in my heart how great is the powerful hand reaching down to save me. I want to see past the difficulties of today to the joy of an eternal life of righteousness. This is what I want; this is what I sometimes fear I cannot do; this is what God can and will do for me. Paul knows God will do this for a believer; that is why he prays for it.

Later in Ephesians is another equally compelling prayer:

"...that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19)"

Life in this age can be tough, painful, and tiring. It is easy for us to lose sight of the central fact of our existence: that God in Christ is saving us with a love so deep that we cannot find its limits. At times we may feel parched and dry for lack of the knowledge of God's love; Paul is praying that we would be dragged into its depths and drenched in it. Not just that we would "feel" loved; such feelings come and go. Paul wants us to know how deeply God loves us so that we can stand firm in the face of today's discouragement.

In the gospel we have the story of a profound hope and a profound love. Believing that story ought to capture our imaginations and thrill our hearts. But the gospel is fighting a battle for our minds against the distractions of this world and the dullness of our hearing. Paul is praying that the power of God would break past all barriers, bringing light into our darkness and hope into our hopelessness.

WORTHY OF YOUR CALLING
A deep and true belief in the gospel builds perseverance and joy into our lives, but it does more. Embracing the gospel leads to wisdom. Granted, all of us, including believers, are sinners, and we demonstrate this fact with depressing regularity. True Christian belief, however, imparts a wisdom which has a profound effect on the moral direction of our lives. The gospel, after all, is all about sin and righteousness: my sin; God's righteousness; God's promise to forgive my sin and make me righteous. Believing the gospel helps us to get our heads screwed on straight, so that we can tell the good from the bad, the morally beautiful from the morally ugly. Paul often prays that his readers would grow into such wisdom.

"And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:9-11)"

" ...we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints of light. (Colossians 1:9-12)"

" To this end also we pray for you always that our God may count you worthy of your calling and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power; in order that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (II Thessalonians 1:11-12)"

Paul has no illusions that any of us will live morally perfect lives. He does, however, believe that God can and will give His people wisdom; we can come to understand the value of mercy and goodness; we can come to be patient with each other in our failures; we can come to long for righteousness and to pursue it as a great good; we can learn gratitude for the promise that one day God will completely erase all sin from our lives. God is in the business of imparting such wisdom to His people; that is why Paul asks Him so often to do it.

Although there is some question whether Paul wrote the book of Hebrews, its concluding prayer could easily have been written by Paul:

"Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. (Hebrews 13:20-21)"

God has a way which He wants us to go, a way which pleases Him. Unfortunately for us, it is a way we could never find on our own. God's grace is so big that it reaches out and weaves into our lives all the good things God wants to find there. Wisdom, maturity, a love of goodness; we desperately need these things. We can join Paul in calling out confidently for them, because God can and will provide them.

CONCLUSION
I have been a Christian for a lot of years, and I have heard a lot of prayers: in churches and in Bible studies; on television and radio; everywhere. Praying is one of those non-negotiable parts of modern Christian culture. And yet I have heard very few prayers that sound much like Paul's. I don't mean I expect anyone to match his eloquence and understanding; I just mean a prayer that is concerned with the same issues that concern Paul. Too often we seem to have our hearts fixed on almost anything else. We want health and wealth and success and miracles and church growth and prayer in schools and a conservative president and a job and a good life for our children and...and...

There is nothing wrong with any of these things, but they can be incredibly distracting from the main issue. You and I are on a life-and- death journey to the kingdom of God. We must grow in faith, be strengthened to persevere, find hope and joy in believing, hunger and thirst after righteousness, live as if the gospel were really true. If we do not, then we will languish and droop; we will fall by the wayside. Belief, encouragement, perseverance, hope, wisdom; these are not optional side-benefits for a certain class of Christian; they are the very stuff of Christianity itself. If we do not find that strength and encouragement which is from God, then we have found nothing at all; we are lost.

God is the source of all strength, all encouragement, all joy. In the middle of a life filled with assaults from all sides, what more important thing can we do than cry out to God for the strength to believe? What more loving thing can we do for each other than to ask God to open all our eyes, strengthen all our hearts? Paul got it right; he knew very well what the churches truly needed. May God have mercy on us and let us see; may our prayers show that we know our true need and know the only One who can meet it.

Ron Julian has been a teacher at McKenzie Study Center, an institute of Gutenberg College, since 1982. He is also a tutor at Gutenberg College, the author of Righteous Sinners, and a co-author of The Language of God: A Commonsense Approach to Understanding and Applying the Bible. With a degree in linguistics, Ron's focus is biblical exegesis and communicating the gospel. Other interests include biblical languages, film, music, literature, and computer technology.

Copyright February 1996 by McKenzie Study Center.

The Main Thing

Testing 1, 2, 3. Is this thing still on? I hope so...

From one of my favorite dead mentors:

"People don't earn God's approval or receive life and salvation because of anything they've done. Rather, the only reason they receive life and salvation is because of God's kindness through Christ. There is no other way.

Many Christians are tired of hearing this teaching over and over. They think that they learned it all long ago. However, they barely understand how important it really is. If it continues to be taught as truth, the Christian church will remain united and pure — free from decay. This truth alone makes and sustains Christianity. You might hear an immature Christian brag about how well he knows that we receive God's approval through God's kindness and not because of anything we do to earn it. But if he goes on to say that this is easy to put into practice, then have no doubt he doesn't know what he's talking about, and he probably never will. We can never learn this truth completely or brag that we understand it fully. Learning this truth is an art. We will always remain students of it, and it will always be our teacher.

The people who truly understand that they receive God's approval by faith and put this into practice don't brag that they have fully mastered it. Rather, they think of it as a pleasant taste or aroma that they are always pursuing. These people are astonished that they can't comprehend it as fully as they would like. They hunger and thirst for it. They yearn for it more and more. They never get tired of hearing about this truth."

-Martin Luther, Quoted in Faith Alone, James C. Galvin

Paul's Prayers - A Great Example to Follow

I've always been fascinated by the apostle Paul's prayers that he shared in his letters, especially as they reveal so much about the sovereignty of God. I ran across one such prayer this morning in Colossians during my daily Bible reading. As I read the prayer it ocurred to me that what Paul was asking from God on behalf of the believers in Colosse is exactly what I would ask God to grant to me and to my brothers and sisters in Christ. That is, the prayers of Paul are not only of great theological benefit, but also practical, as an example to follow when praying for others and for ourselves.

(Col 1:9) And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,
(Col 1:10) so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.
(Col 1:11) May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy,
(Col 1:12) giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

Make me an instrument

Today's prayer called to mind the following song - recorded by The Ragamuffin Band.

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace:
where there's hatred, let me sow love;
and where there is injury, pardon;
and where there is doubt, then faith;
and where there's despair, then hope.

It's in dying that I will be born,
and in giving that I will receive,
it's in loving that I will be loved,
this is my faith: it is what I believe.

Lord, make me an instrument.
Make me an instrument.

Lord, I am a stranger traveling
in a brutal yet wondrous land,
far from the promise of home,
on a journey, led by Your hand
to where the lion lies down with the lamb.

Father, grant that I'd never seek
to be comforted as to console;
let the blood of Your Son cover me,
touching my spirit, seizing my soul,

Lord, make me an instrument.
Lord, make me an instrument.
Lord make me YOUR instrument.

Let Your divine mystery guide my heart:
it's in dying that I will be born,
and in giving that I will receive,
it's in loving that I will be loved;
this is my faith: it is what I believe.

Christ within me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me, Christ above me,
Christ beneath me, to my left and my right, Christ where I lie and where I arise,
Christ in the hearts of all who think of me, Christ on the lips of all who speak of me,
Christ in the eyes of all who see me---
make me Your instrument, Lord!

Make me Your instrument, Lord!
Make me Your instrument, Lord!
Make me Your instrument, Lord!
Make me Your instrument.

Matthew Henry on Hebrews 10:19-25

Our way to heaven is by a crucified Saviour; his death is to us the way of life, and to those who believe this, he will be precious. They must draw near to God; it would be contempt of Christ, still to keep at a distance. Their bodies were to be washed with pure water, alluding to the cleansings directed under the law: thus the use of water in baptism, was to remind Christians that their conduct should be pure and holy. While they derived comfort and grace from their reconciled Father to their own souls, they would adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour in all things. Believers are to consider how they can be of service to each other, especially stirring up each other to the more vigorous and abundant exercise of love, and the practice of good works. The communion of saints is a great help and privilege, and a means of stedfastness and perseverance. We should observe the coming of times of trial, and be thereby quickened to greater diligence. There is a trying day coming on all men, the day of our death.