The Loving Discipline of the Father

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” | Hebrews 12:5b-6

Christians, we should count it as joy when the LORD disciplines us, because His active discipline in our lives is evidence that He loves us and treats us like sons.

It's not easy. Most of us would probably prefer to receive a dose of easy grace, without the side of loving discipline...but the author of Hebrews tells us that the absence of discipline can actually be considered an absence of love. Therefore, when we read the beautiful words of scripture, "For the LORD disciplines the one(s) he loves..." we find comfort, because God's discipline is always loving and is always used to heal, help, and sharpen. Always for his glory and always for our blessing.

God's Word promises Christians that they will continue to grow into the likeness of Jesus Christ. One of the primary ways this growth comes about is through the loving discipline of the Father. 

And how much do we need it? We are sinners, engulfed in self-centered and destructive behavior. As God's adopted sons and daughters, He cannot allow us to continue to live such reckless and destructive lives. God's aim is, and always has been, to be glorified in and through His image bearers. This can only happen through His correcting work; as he reshapes mankind into the image of His Son. #GrowOn

Winning our Brothers Back

"Every conversation about sinfulness and rebellion against the Lord that calls people to repent is about winning our brothers back. It's not about being right. It's not about justice. It's not even about being justified. It's about concern for the soul of our brother and sister that would make us enter into an uncomfortable situation and risk the relationship for the reward of winning our brothers and sisters back, because in light of eternity, this confrontation is of utmost importance." | Matt Chandler

God is Always Up to Something Good

Trials sometimes make us doubt God's presence, but we must be careful not to view them as evidence of God absence, but instead we should cling to the truth in God's word which says,

Romans 5:1-5 (ESV | emphasis added)

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

The past year has been one that has stretched me in ways I've never been stretched before. I've been tested in my faith, my theology, and my character. Many of these trials have come in shapes that I never would have expected, where God...in his providence...chose to pin some of the things I value most in my life against each other. While at first glance these situations could easily be viewed as the work of the enemy, hindsight has proven them to be the work of God. You see, the truth is that even the things the enemy attempts to use for his own evil gain, sift through the sovereign hands of God...and God is always up to something good in the life of the Christian. God works tirelessly, in the lives of his elect, to conform them into the image of his Son, Jesus Christ. And regardless if it's a trial or a blessing, the aim in God's act is always the same.

I'm not sure where this post will find you in your faithwalk and Christian journey, but I'm hopeful that as you read it and (hopefully) listen to the song that I've included (below)...that your heart will be filled with joy at the work God is doing in your life. I pray that God will grant each of us the ability to look beyond our current circumstances and by his grace will give us the ability to "taste and see that the LORD is good" (Psalm 34:8). I pray that each of us will have enough faith in God's goodness and sovereignty over all things, that we'll be able to trust in God's word and cling to the promise that, 

He who began a good work in [us] will be faithful in carrying that work on to it's completion. | (Phil. 1:6)

“Though You Slay Me” (featuring John Piper) from Desiring God on Vimeo.

God Grant Me a Sensitive Conscience

Here's a newsflash for you: The Christian Life is Hard.

Now while you try to come to grips with this crazy thought, I want to share with you a few resources from John MacArthur on one of the greatest tools God has given us to help us battle sin.

"The conscience is generally seen by the modern world as a defect that robs people of their self-esteem. Far from being a defect or a disorder, however, your ability to sense your own guilt is a tremendous gift from God. He designed the conscience into the very framework of the human soul. It is the automatic warning system that cries, "Pull up! Pull up!" before you crash and burn." | John MacArthur - The Conscience, Revisited

That's right. A "guilty" conscience should not be ignored. Sensitivity to guilt is not primarily about making a person feel bad, but is instead about helping them stay sensitive to their sin. In Jeremiah, we see a passage of scripture that shows how Israel's sin no longer had any effect on them at all. A land where people had ignored their consciences and guilt for so long that their hearts were no longer sensitive to their sin. Their hearts were hard towards their iniquities and they actually forgot how to blush.

Were they ashamed when they committed abomination?
No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush. | Jeremiah 6:15

The conscience is a tool which can be used to help us in our Christian walk, but we must work to keep our conscience sensitive. If we are not investing significant time into God's word and working to apply it to our lives, then our conscience will not be trained towards righteousness, but will instead be trained in worldliness. The old cliché, you are what you eat rings true here. What we invest our time into will be what we become. If we desire to be holy, then we must cling to what is holy. We must study God's holy word that our hearts may remain soft and aware of what is good, acceptable and perfect. Paul tells us in Romans 12:2:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

We can't discern what the will of God is if we are not investing significant time into studying, meditating on and memorizing his word. God has given us his bible and our consciences as tools for our pursuit of holiness, but these two things must work together. We must fill our hearts (and conscience) with God's truth if we truly desire to have a heart that is passionate for God and his glory.

I'll leave you with this short audio clip from John MacArthur which gives a wonderful analogy of how this all applies to our lives.

For His Glory,

Jason

Do Our Choices Really Matter?

Our Children Will Be Good Sailors, Well Equipped for the Voyage

"The discipline of parenting can be the road to an enlarged soul and the path to unimagined heights of spiritual development. That’s the way God planned it. [If parenting is done rightly] our children’s sails will be set to go with Christ, to buck the winds of culture, to follow wherever he leads — and our children will be good sailors, well equipped for the voyage." | Hughes, Barbara (2007-03-31). Disciplines of a Godly Family

No Plan B - On Discipleship.

Our Feelings vs. God's Truth

“My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God’s word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes―many times―my feelings are out of sync with the truth. When that happens… I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth.” | John Piper

The Pursuit of Holiness

As The Journey class I'm involved in quickly comes to an end, we are each being challenged to find our personal mission statement moving forward. Looking back over the past (7) months since this class started, there is very little doubt what God has been up to in my life. I'm thankful for the ability to clearly see his work in me and the direction he is challenging me to go, in faith, moving forward.

The topic that God has laid on my heart this week is the concept of personal holiness. Now to many, if not most, the idea of holiness comes with a somewhat of a sour taste. Many of us have run into people who strive for holiness via human mechanisms which reek of pride, legalism, self-righteousness and personal morality. However, pushing all those sinful concepts aside...it is still clear in scripture that as Christians each of us have been called to be holy. Look at these verses:

For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. | Leviticus 11:44 (ESV)

but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, | 1 Peter 1:15 (ESV)

These verses show us that God commands and expects us to be holy as he is holy. So, knowing what we know about our own sinfulness...how are we to live into this command? Jerry Bridges has a wonderful book called "The Pursuit of Holiness" which I think is a recommended read for every Christian. In this book he spends a great deal of time helping readers to understand that the Christians ability to be holy comes only through God's provision. However, he also goes on to show that while God does provide the way (through faith in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit) for our holiness, each Christian still bears the responsibility of living out the holiness that God calls us to.

[God] makes provision for our holiness, but He gives us the responsibility of using those provisions. | Jerry Bridges

Far too often, Christians take the easy way out. Yes, we are all sinners...that's a rudimentary understanding to our faith...and our need for Christ...but as Christians we are sinners who have been saved by grace, transformed by the mighty power of the Holy Spirit and are liberated from the bondages of sin in order that we may live our lives in such a way as to rightly reflect the image and the glory of God. The sad reality for man of us is that we are far too easy on ourselves when we sin. Sin is not something we should simply shrug off in our lives and it is certainly not something that we should ever make friends with as if it was nothing more than a mark or blemish on our otherwise decent-looking physique. We make war against our sin in order that we may be holy as God is holy.

So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 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. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” | (Romans 8:12-15 ESV)

As Christians, we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit and therefore we have the ability to pursue holiness and to "put to death the deeds of the flesh". Through Christ, we are no longer debtors to sin, but are now debtors to God. Is it not time that we start living fully into this freedom and stop using grace as the perpetual excuse for why we continue to fail? Is it not time that we equip and encourage the body of believers at Harbor to surrender their excuses and live unto Christ? Can we not live out, in all areas of our lives, 1 Cor. 10:31? Yes, we will still continue to need God's grace for the rest of our lives...but grace is no excuse for laziness, apathy, indifference and lack of zeal. God has rescued us from self-loathing and sloth he has rescued us from the bondage of sin and he has called us to make war with sin in every capacity (i.e. pride, worldliness, laziness etc). We have been set free that we may show our community and the world, through our personal witness, that Christ has restored for us the ability to bear God's image and reflect God's glory as we were originally created for. (Gen. 1:27)

Holiness, for the Christian, is a choice. We can either choose to live into the freedom which Christ has provided us...or we can choose to allow sin to win the battles in our lives. God calls us to holiness, but this holiness will not come without a fight...and we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling and we must "do our best to present ourselves to God as one who is approved" (2 Tim. 2:15). Either way, we must acknowledge that personal holiness is not something that will fall into our laps or come easily. We must pursue it...and in our pursuit, God will bless our faithfulness and obedience.

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated. | D.A. Carson

This is something that Jonathan Edwards understood very well. He wrote a list of "resolutions" to which he made a covenant with God to live by. If you have time, I'd encourage you to check out the following link to see the things which he resolved to do, as a Christian. They are amazing examples of what we can choose to be, if we are willing to stop selling ourselves short and instead hold ourselves and each other accountable to the holiness which God demands from each of us.

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/articles/the-resolutions-of-jonathan-edwards



For His Glory,

Jason

Every Man is a Missionary

Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends or designs it or not. He may be a blot radiating his dark influence outward to the very circumference of society, or he may be a blessing spreading benediction over the length and breadth of the world. | Thomas Chalmers

Sanctification

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. 

1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 (ESV)

Sanctification, literally means "to set apart" for special use or purpose, that is, to make it holy or sacred. Therefore, sanctification refers to the state or process of being set apart, i.e. made holy. This is a work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian. Paul, in the passage above, is reminding the church of Thessalonica that God is purifying for himself a people. That Jesus is making for himself a holy and purified bride.

Theology Matters

"Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not [rightly] known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator..." | Richard Baxter

Why Theology Matters (to all of us):

The word theology comes from two Greek words, theos (God) and logos (word). From them we can see that theology is the study of God and his attributes, using the scriptures as the source of this truth. If God is the supreme being in all the universe, is it not of utmost importance for us to know him as much as we can? We invest time into things which hold significance for us. I remember when Anna and I first started dating....I wanted to know everything about her. I wanted to know her favorite color, her favorite candy, her favorite songs....the food she liked the people she liked...There was never a point where I felt like I knew too much information about her. As we've grown in our relationship, that hasn't changed. I want to know as much as I can about Anna, because I love her. The same holds true for Elijah and now Piper. I find pleasure in knowing all that I can about them, because I love them.

However, for some reason, when it comes to theology, people often times get squirmy and uncomfortable. There seems to be a negative association with the word theology, when in all actuality it simply means the study of God...which should be the one thing that we are most interested in.

The Bible tells us that God is:

• Omniscient (all-knowing, 1 John 3:20) 
• Omnipresent (existing everywhere, Psalm 139:7-12) 
• Omnipotent (He accomplishes whatever He desires, Jer. 32:17,27) 
• He is eternal (Psalm 90:2) 
• Holy (Isaiah 6:3), 
• Merciful (Psalm 67:1) 
• Gracious & Good (1 Pet. 2:3) 

This is just a small example of the wonderful riches we can discover about God, by studying his word and the more we (rightly) understand about God, the more our heart's affections will grow towards him. So the question is....are we being faithful in our efforts to study God's word?

What's the point of Theology:

The ultimate goal of Christian theology isn't simply to gain knowledge so we can boast in our own intelligence and wisdom. The goal is to learn about God, His nature, and His will, and how they apply and relate to us. When we rightly understand how big God really is will in turn we will be brought to an understanding of how small we really are. Or to say this a bit differently  the more we learn about God from his scriptures, the more our hearts will be humbled. Also, if faithfulness to God is our real aim, then we must make sure that we understand what the bible says God expects from us?

The Authority of Scripture as it relates to Theology:

The key to rightly knowing God is to rightly understand the inspiration and authority of scripture and how to rightly handle it. We cannot know God, or what he expects from us if we don't study the scriptures to discover these things. The bible has been given to us, by God, as a gift which contains these truths.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 tell us:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

We are doing ourselves no spiritual service if we are not using the bible as our reference point to all matters of faith. As we see in the verses from 2 Timothy, all scripture is profitable for knowing God and helping us line our lives up with what he has called us to be and do. We study God's scripture so we can grow in holiness (1 Pet. 1:15-16), obedience (James 1:4) and faithfulness (Heb. 6:1)...and "that [we] may be complete, [and] equipped for every good work". Without a devotion to the study of scriptures, we set ourselves up to be led astray by false teaching and false understandings of God and his will for our lives. Our emotions start to drive us towards actions that are not godly and we start to become influenced by things that were never meant to guide and direct us. Things like our emotions, our culture, mysticism and philosophy...which are under the same curse of sin that we are. Only God (and his word) can perfectly guide us towards holiness, obedience and faithfulness and therefore we must study the scriptures to ensure we are rightly handling the word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15).

"In space, astronauts experience the misery of having no reference point, no force that draws them to the center. Where there is no "moral gravity" – that is, no force that draws us to the center – there is spiritual weightlessness. We float on feelings that will carry us where we were never meant to go; we bubble with emotional experiences that we often take for spiritual ones; and we are puffed up with pride. Instead of seriousness, there is foolishness. Instead of gravity, flippancy. Sentimentality takes the place of theology. Our reference point will never serve to keep our feet on solid rock. Our reference point, until we answer God's call, is merely ourselves. We cannot possibly tell which end is up." | Elizabeth Elliot 

It is my prayer that each of us will understand the importance of theology. I pray that the Holy Spirit will convict our hearts to study God's scriptures and make it crucial part of our very existence I also pray that he will bless our studies and will allow us, like David, to faithfully and honestly say...

"On the glorious splendor of your majesty,
and on your wondrous works, I will meditate." (Psalm 145:5 ESV)

Other Quotes on Theology:

"Theology is a serious quest for the true knowledge of God, undertaken in response to His self-revelation, illumined by Christian tradition, manifesting a rational inner coherence, issuing in ethical conduct, resonating with the contemporary world and concerned for the greater glory of God." | John Stott

"Questions of who God is and of what He is like can never be considered irrelevant to the practical matters of church life. Different understandings of God will lead you to worship Him in different ways, and if some of those understandings are wrong, some of those ways in which you approach Him could be wrong as well." | Mark Dever

"We're all theologians. The question is whether what we know about God is true." | Josh Harris

For His Glory,

Jason