I’m scared to be a father. I’m scared to think that I might have to teach someone right from wrong. I’m scared to think that someone would look to me for an example. I have lived with myself for far to long. I know my sins and failures. I know my weaknesses and vices. I know all the ways that I disappoint people.
And yet, as I type this tonight, there is hope. As is so often the case, this hope is founded on a promise. A promise not made by a man…
“So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. ” (Hebrews 6:17-18)
My hope for my children is found in the same promise that is meant for me.
And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” (Acts 2:38-39)
No matter how screwed up and fallen I am my hope for my children is founded on the very grace and mercy that I have partaken of. The God who saves my soul will surely watch over the soul of my children. And it is that thought that will give me rest tonight. Not a rest of prideful assurance but rather, a rest of peaceful trust in One who is greater and more faithful than I. Praise to The Lord Almighty!
The Savior was “a man of sorrows,” but every thoughtful mind has discovered the fact that down deep in His innermost soul He carried an inexhaustible treasury of refined and heavenly joy. Of all the human race, there was never a man who had a deeper, purer, or more abiding peace than our Lord Jesus Christ. “He was anointed with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” His vast benevolence must, from the very nature of things, have afforded Him the deepest possible delight, for benevolence is joy. There were a few remarkable seasons when this joy manifested itself. “In that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. . . .” Christ had His songs, even in the darkness; even though His face was marred, and His countenance had lost the luster of earthly happiness, yet sometimes it was illumined with a matchless splendor of unparalleled satisfaction as He thought upon the recompense of the reward and in the midst of the congregation sang His praise unto God. In this, the Lord Jesus is a blessed picture of His church on earth. At this hour the church expects to walk in sympathy with her Lord along a thorny road; through much tribulation she is making her way to the crown. To bear the cross is her office, and to be scorned and counted an alien by her mother’s children is her lot; and yet the church has a deep well of joy, of which none can drink but her own children. There are stores of wine and oil and corn hidden in the midst of our Jerusalem, upon which the saints of God are continuously sustained and nurtured. And sometimes, as in our Savior’s case, we have our seasons of intense delight, for “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God.” Even though we are exiles, we rejoice in our King; yes, in Him we exceedingly rejoice, while in His name we set up our banners.
-C.H. Spurgeon (Updated by Alistair Begg)
I will not judge a person to be spiritually dead whom I have judged formerly to have had spiritual life, though I see him at present in a swoon (faint)as to all evidences of the spiritual life. And the reason why I will not judge him so is this — because if you judge a person dead, you neglect him, you leave him; but if you judge him in a swoon,(faint) though never so dangerous, you use all means for the retrieving of his life.
John Owen
To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life — to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son — how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it means to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.
-C.S. Lewis
the spots - EP PROMO 01.09.08 from avery-co on Vimeo.
I ordered this book and I am incredibly excited to start reading it. Here is the description from from amazon.com:
Over the years, scholars have labored to show that C. S. Lewis’s famed Chronicles of Narnia have an underlying symbolic coherence, pointing to such possible unifying themes as the seven sacraments, the seven deadly sins, and the seven books of Spenser’s Faerie Queene. None of these explanations has won general acceptance and the nature of Narnia’s symbolism has remained a puzzle. Michael Ward has finally solved the mystery. In Planet Narnia, he argues
convincingly that medieval cosmology, a subject which fascinated Lewis throughout his life, provides the imaginative key to the seven novels. Drawing on the whole range of Lewis’s writings (including previously unpublished drafts of the Chronicles), Ward shows that the Narnia stories were designed to express the characteristics of the seven medieval planets–the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn–planets which Lewis described as “spiritual symbols of permanent value” and “especially worthwhile in our own generation.” Using these seven symbols, Lewis secretly constructed the Chronicles so that the story-line in each book, countless points of ornamental detail, and, most important, the portrayal of the Christ-figure of Aslan, all serve to communicate the governing planetary personality. For instance, in The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader,” the sun is the prevailing planetary spirit: magical water turns things to gold, the solar metal; Aslan is seen flying in a sunbeam; and the sun’s rising place is actually identified as the destination of the plot: “the very eastern end of the world.” Planet Narnia is a ground-breaking study that will provoke a major reassessment not only of the Chronicles, but of Lewis’s whole literary and theological outlook, revealing him to be a much subtler writer and thinker than has previously been recognized.
Should be a very interesting read!
I’m lazy and horrible at keeping blog writing commitments. In light of this i will simply post Picks 7-1 of my best of 2007.
#7 : Overdressed - Caedmon’s Call
#6 : Recovery -Jeremy Casella
#5 : Letters To The Editor Vol. 1 - Andrew Osenga
#4 : Sky Blue Sky - Wilco
#3 : Boxer - The National
#2 : The Ringing Bell - Derek Webb
#1 : Reinventing The Wheel - Andy Gullahorn
