The Wounded Soul

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It takes a wound. This wounding must be done by God. He has a way of striping our souls bare and exposing the depths of what we are. We all fear—deep down—that we are failures. The wounding comes when we see the truth of these things. The one wounded freely acknowledges that everyone ought hate him. Until now, he has feared that his family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers would discover unspeakable shame in himself. He has hidden this fear, but now the full force of it comes and he is undone. All of his hopes and dreams are for nothing. All of his desires are for things that he either wont get, or that aren’t worth getting anyway. He falls into utter despair. He is cut to the quick. From this wound, there is no recovery.

Such despair is essential to the conversion process. Heretofore, the source of a man’s dreams, joys, hopes, and delights has not been God. He has always feared, “maybe I am of no use to anyone.” Now he knows that this is completely correct. When God speaks, you can’t say nice things back to him. You lay as one slain. This is the gospel: we can’t save ourselves, only God can.

John Bunyan said:

Conversion is not the smooth, easy-going process some men seem to think … It is wounding work, of course, this breaking of the hearts, but without wounding there is no saving. … Where there is grafting there is a cutting, the scion must be let in with a wound; to stick it on to the outside or to tie it on with a string would be of no use. Heart must be set to heart and back to back, or there will be no sap from root to branch, and this I say, must be done by a wound.

The Christian life not only starts in this manner, but it continues in the same. God hands the knife over to us and tells us to keep cutting. We are to put ourselves utterly to death in order that he might live in us. Yet our sinful hearts do not die easily. We strive for success in ministry. We want everyone to see how Godly we are. We are willing to do many things for God but there are things that we hold back, things we believe we will care for better than he would.

Instead, toss everything on the alter, and watch while God destroys it all.

Christians, when they are acting as Christians are untouchable. What will you say to a man that freely abides in such despair. Will you turn his friends against him? Will you destroy his property? Will you attack him physically? He already gave up on all of these things long ago. Christ is now his rock. He cares not what man can do.

Most people will spend their entire lives running from such an experience as this. The unconverted are not alone in avoiding God, we who know God spend much of our time in the same pursuit.

Some verses

Patron Provider

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With my combination of passion, intelligence, communication skills, and so on … why don’t I just go to seminary and become a pastor? That is a good question. I don’t have the answer, but I have some thoughts, one of which is a doubt that a good pastor is what the American Church needs right now.

Many people believe that if we honor God well, then God will love us. It is easy for people to conceive of a God who loves pastors. A God who honors those who honor him is not hard to imagine. It is much harder to believe in a God who would condescend to love and care for someone like myself.

I don’t have anything to recommend myself to God. Most people seem to think I’m sinning in some way or other by living the way I do. I’m sure many secretly want me to fail. I’m lazy, I’m wasting my talents, I need an inter-national ministry or at least a mega-church. At very least I ought be the head pastor of a small church. Some might settle for an elder or an assistant pastor but that is the absolute bottom. Do any of these, and then God can provide for you. These things count, but if God really provides for all of his children, why would anyone ever work? This is the unasked but always present question.

In that line of thought, we show that we do not believe that the Bible is true.

I do the same thing. Almost everyday, I find myself justifying my time to myself or to someone else. I can’t bring myself to tell people that I spent the last two days trying (almost ineffectively) to pray and read scriptures. Instead, I tell people about three days ago when I talked to the homeless man. I do this because I believe, as everyone else does, that we need to recommend ourselves to God by good works in order to have his good grace upon us.

But merited grace is no grace at all.

We do not believe that God will provide for his saints everything they need.

We do not believe that God provides provisions for us free from any merit on our part what-so-ever.

We believe that if we work well, then God owes us provisions.

This belief makes God our debtor rather than our gracious patron-provider.

Is this how we treat our own children: “work hard enough and well enough, and I’ll give you dinner, otherwise, you’re on your own.” Obviously not, but this is the way we think of God. This is the way we talk about God. And this is the testimony that our lives give about God. In our thoughts, words, and deeds we witness to the supposed fact that we are much better fathers to our earthly children than God is to his spiritual children and we commit this blaspheme daily. How long will God let us mock him in this way?

Who will show that this is wrong? Who will teach with their lives, words, and thoughts that this is absolutely not true? Here I am, send me.

To be despised both within and without of the church so that men can see that God loves without thought to merit is to me a very glorious thought. It challenges my belief of free grace to think that God might love me enough to use me in such a way as this, even I who am so unworthy of such an honor.

The Faith of George Müller

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What did the faith of George Müller look like? Here is a story I found browsing around the internet:

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I went to America some years ago with the captain of a steamer, who was a very devoted Christian. When off the coast of Newfoundland he said to me, “The last time I crossed here, five weeks ago, something happened which revolutionized the whole of my Christian life. We had George Müller of Bristol on board. I had been on the bridge twenty-four hours and never left it. George Müller came to me, and said, “Captain I have come to tell you that I must be in Quebec Saturday afternoon.” “It’s impossible,” I said. “Very well, if your ship cannot take me, God will find some other way. I have never broken an engagement in fifty-seven years. Let us go down into the chart-room and pray.”

I looked at that man of God, and thought to myself, what lunatic asylum can that man have come from? I never heard of such a thing as this. “Mr. Müller,” I said, “do you know how dense the fog is?” “No,” he replied, “my eye is not on the density of the fog, but on the living God, who controls every circumstance of my life.”

He knelt down and prayed one of the most simple prayers, and when he had finished I was going to pray; but he put his hand on my shoulder, and told me not to pray. “First, you do not believe He will answer; and second I believe he has, and there is no need whatever for you to pray about it.”

I looked at him, and he said, “Captain, I have known my Lord for fifty-seven years, and there has never been a single day that I have failed to get audience with the King. Get up, Captain and open the door, and you will find the fog gone.” I got up, and the fog was indeed gone. On Saturday afternoon, George Müller was in Quebec for his engagement.

Müller dedicated his life to demonstrating God as faithful. What a tragedy it is that history remembers him as a man of mighty faith. Don’t come away from this story with awe of Müller but let Müller point you towards awe of God. Müller’s great faith did not make him mighty, but Müller’s weak faith showed God mighty. Towards such people as would think of Müller as a mighty man, beyond what is normally possible for God’s people, Müller says this:

I affectionately warn against being led away by the device of Satan, to think that these things are peculiar to me, and cannot be enjoyed by all the children of God; for though, as has been stated before, every believer is not called upon to establish Orphan-Houses, Charity Schools, etc., and trust in the Lord for means, yet all believers are called upon, in the simple confidence of faith, to cast all their burdens upon Him, to trust in him for every thing, and not only to make every thing a subject of prayer, but to expect answers to their petitions which they have asked according to His will, and in the name of the Lord Jesus.— Think not, dear reader, that I have the gift of faith, that is, that gift of which we read in 1 Cor. 12:9, and which is mentioned along with ” the gifts of healing,” “the working of miracles,” “prophecy,” and that on that account I am able to trust in the Lord. It is true that the faith, which I am enabled to exercise, is altogether God’s own gift; it is true that He alone supports it, and that He alone can increase it; it is true that, moment by moment, I depend upon Him for it, and that, if I were only one moment left to myself, my faith would utterly fail; but it is not true that my faith is that gift of faith which is spoken of in 1 Cor. 12:9 …

Once more, let not Satan deceive you in making you think that you could not have the same faith, but that it is only for persons who are situated as I am. When I lose such a thing as a key, I ask the Lord to direct me to it, and I look for an answer to my prayer; when a person with whom I have made an appointment does not come, according to the fixed time, and I begin to be inconvenienced by it, I ask the Lord to be pleased to hasten him to me, and I look for an answer; when I do not understand a passage of the word of God, I lift up my heart to the Lord, that He would be pleased, by His holy Spirit, to instruct me, and I expect to be taught, though I do not fix the time when, and the manner how it should be; when I am going to minister in the Word, I seek help from the Lord, and while I in the consciousness of natural inability as well as utter unworthiness, begin this His service, I am not cast down, but of good cheer, because I look for His assistance, and believe that He, for His dear Son’s sake, will help me. And thus in other of my temporal and spiritual concerns I pray to the Lord, and expect an answer to my requests; and may not you do the same, dear believing reader? Oh! I beseech you, do not think me an extraordinary believer, having privileges above other of God’s dear children, which they cannot have; nor look on my way of acting as something that would not do for other believers. Make but trial! Do but stand still in the hour of trial, and you will see the help of God, if you trust in Him.
-George Müller

When you read and hear about Müller. Know that he was a humble, poor, often full-of-doubt sinner. Yet God used him in mighty ways. Why? Because he opened his mouth. Here is Müller looking back over many years at the start of his endeavors towards the orphans:

It is now 68 years ago that my heart was greatly tried, when again and again I saw dear children losing both parents, and there was no one to take a real deep interest in their well-being.

I felt deeply for such bereaved children, and I said again and again to myself, “O I wish I had a little Orphan institution, into which I could take these children.” But the desire remained for years only a desire, though I had much prayer in connection with it. In the November of the year 1835, a particular circumstance occurred, through the instrumentality of which I was made to know how to be able to do some­thing for destitute orphans, and I began to pray more earnestly than ever I had done before that God would be pleased to guide and direct me whether I should make a beginning of a little Orphan institution. Thus I prayed month after month, and at last I came to the decision that I would do something in this way; and though it might have never so small a beginning, I would make a beginning.

Now, just reading through the whole Bible, I came, at that time, to this 81st Psalm and to this 10th verse, “I am Jehovah thy God, Who brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.” When I read this verse, I shut the Bible, went to the door of my room and locked it, and then I cast myself on the floor and began to pray. I said to my Heavenly Father, “I have only asked Thee, Heavenly Father, that Thou shouldest show me whether I shall begin the Orphan work or not. Thou hast been pleased to make that plain to me, and now ‘I will open my mouth wide.’ Be pleased to ‘fill it.’ Give me, my Heavenly Father, a suitable house to begin the work; give me suitable helpers to take care of the children; and give me a thousand pounds sterling to make a beginning.
…
And in all God has been pleased to give me, simply in answer to prayer, £1,416,000 sterling! One million, four hundred and sixteen thousand pounds sterling, without asking a single human being! !

There is none, in this whole city, who can say that I ever asked them for a penny; there is none, in the whole of England, who can say that I ever asked them for a penny; there is none under heaven, in the whole wide world, who can say that I ever asked them for a penny. To God, and to God alone, I went; and I did this because I knew ever since my conversion that one of the greatest necessities for the Church of God at large was an increase of faith. Therefore, I deter­mined to dedicate my whole life to this one great lesson, for the Church of God to learn, and the world at large to learn: real, true, lasting dependence on God.
-George Müller

George Müller opened his mouth, and God filled it to overflowing. He will do the same to you.

Finding God’s Will

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Men who follow after God are often asked, “how does God guide you?” Is it by signs and wonders or a still small voice? Perhaps he guides through open and closed doors or through fleeces laid out? Does God bring to mind things from his word or while in prayer? Is there a special peace that accompanies such leadings? Where does godly council fit in?

I may not be very holy, and I have not followed after God for very long or followed him very well, but I have my answer to such questions. It is not a matter of how to follow but a matter if we will follow at all. The leading of God is not dependent upon the skill of the follower but on that of the leader. No one sings songs about how well they follow after God. Instead, we sing, “He leadeth me! He leadeth me! By his own hand he leadeth me!”

This is a wonder too great to express without the aid of the Holy Ghost. Follow after him and he will lead you. Can it really be that simple? Yes! As surely as he led Abraham and Moses across desert lands, so too will he lead you. As trustworthy as he was with Müller and Taylor, so too will he be with you. This promise is to you and to your children and to all who are far off. He will be your God, and you will be his people. He will be that voice behind you that says; “Here is the way, walk in it.”

Do not concern yourself with how that voice will sound. You might as well fret over whether the voice will be a tenor or baritone as ask whether it will be a sign or a gentle feeling. More than likely, the leading will come in a completely unexpected way. God delights to blow our socks off, he doesn’t often meet our expectations—he explodes them.

Yet I will answer the question asked. God often leads me by not leading me. He lets me go on in silence, not knowing what I am doing. Then later, he turns my head to look back at what has been accomplished since I last found my bearings and I see something wonderful. I see every step carefully placed in the exact right spot. I see that if I had gone to the left or to the right, some disaster would have befallen, yet God led me perfectly though the treacherous minefield—never letting me misstep. I believe that he does it this way, so that I might have full assurance that it was due to no skill of my own. The amazing thing that God accomplished was never in my head: I never knew about it until after it was already too late for me to impact it. Yet it was through my hand that God worked his might upon the world.

Our God is amazing.

Stop trying to figure him out and start following after him!

A Question

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I wrote this to myself. I am generally harsher with myself than with others. Yet it has been enough of a help to me in recent months that I decided to put it up in case it is useful to someone else.

Why don’t you care more about Christ than you do?

Surely you will agree that you ought to care more for him. He is God after all. He did die on account of sins such as yours. Yet what care do you give him in return? Perhaps you read your Bible. Perhaps you go to church and try to follow his laws. Yet I wonder if you really do that for him or if you do that for you. Think about the last time you read your Bible or prayed, did you do it because a deep care for Christ necessitated seeking him or for some other reason?

Why don’t you care more about Christ than you do?

Surely you will agree that Christ has given his Holy Spirit unto Christians so that they might adore Christ beyond what a person is able to do. Is that how you would describe your care for Christ: so great as to supersede the natural order of things? Is it so great that you search in vain for an analogy in nature but none is to be found so you settle on something much less, like love for a child or a spouse? Or do those loves fit pretty well for you? Perhaps those loves are even greater than the love you have for God. Surely this can not be the care that only the might of God is able to produce.

Why don’t you care more about Christ than you do?

The answer I can come up with is because I am a very great sinner. My soul, my heart, my mind, and my strength are given to things that are not God. These things I care for and so little room is left for God. That is why I don’t care more about Christ than I do. Yet he is pushing those things out of my life. Slowly yet steadily they are leaving to make room for me to love him.

A Story of Regeneration

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Who doesn’t like a good conversion story?

Besides being heart-warming, this video is a good example to those struggling with their view of regeneration of what it looks like in reality.

If you like Paul Washer, here are a couple of longer videos that I like of him:

• Shocking Youth Message
• Ten Indictments

A Passion Filled Life

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Did you know that you might die soon?

How does that thought make you feel?

Maybe within a year you will be dead.

Did you know that you will suffer in this life? You might even suffer greatly.

What thoughts does that evoke in you?

For some of you, you are getting excited just hearing those questions and thinking those thoughts. A smile is coming to your lips and a twinkle is coming to your eyes.

Others of you can’t imagine why suffering and dying are exciting prospects. I’ll try to explain it:

First of all, this world is not our home. Dying to a Christian is a necessary step towards going home, and though it might be a hard step, it is not comparable to how glorious our home will be.

Secondly, God says that those He loves he chastises (Heb. 12:6). Some of you love God’s chastisement because in it, you feel God’s love.

Thirdly, some of us hope to live a martyr’s life and to die a martyr’s death. That by our living or by our dying we might win souls to Christ and quicken those around us to living glorious and warlike lives for Jesus. Says the servant of the Lord, “Oh that God would use me for the building and the strengthening of His Church.”

Christ suffered death on a cross. Before that death he was mocked, beaten, reviled and tortured by even those He had come to save. People now can have salvation from sins and power for life by looking to that cross.

Moreover, Christ’s servants can show that cross to the world in their sufferings. Men might mock, beat, revile, torture, and kill us. But that is what God uses to proclaim His passion to the world, and it is that prospect that makes us excited: not because we love the suffering itself, but because we yearn to show the world Jesus. We are not only willing, but joyful, to be killed all the day long for Christ’s sake.

Do you want to live a passionate life for Jesus? Doing so takes passion. Allow me to explain what the word “passion” means. Acts 1:3, in the ESV reads “He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs.” The verse says that He suffered.

Now that word suffering in the Greek reads Pathane a form of Pathos, which is a word we use today. The Latin translates the Greek Pathane into Passionem, the root of which is Passio, and it is from the Latin, Passio, from which we get our word passion, which is exactly how the King James renders this verse. “He shewed himself alive after his passion.”

Did you see it? Passion is a synonym for suffering. To live a passionate life for Jesus means to live a suffering life for Jesus. The two are utterly unseparable. As Christ’s Passion was his suffering, so too our passion is our suffering.

I do not know the exact history, but it seems that our spiritual forefathers knew the joy of passion, of suffering, so well that they were able to transform the word itself into a positive word. Oh that we could be the ones to do that in our generation. Let us take such joy in the prospect of suffering for Jesus that hundreds of years from now, our descendents think of the word ’suffering’ as such a positive word that they use it to describe the joys and triumphs of life.

Now, to those that aren’t excited by suffering, who can’t grapple with the notion of it being a positive thing. I fear that you might have a cold, hard heart. Let me say it a different way: you lack passion. I have no desire to deride you or judge you for this. How can I judge you? I am like you! Without God’s power in my life to live this very day in joy, I would suffer the same condition.

Instead, I bring up this hardness because I would like to help you. Today, God offers to you the power to soften your heart and to be used in His service. Wont you consider His offer? You might have called yourself a Christian all your life, but today, for whatever reason, you do not know the abundant joy of His service. Want it! Crave it!

I do not know to which of you I am speaking, but you know who you are. More importantly God knows who you are. Again, to you, I do not have a message of shame and reproach; but one of hope and encouragement. Today, God can soften your heart! I don’t care if you’ve called yourself a Christian all your life. I don’t care if you are a pastor’s kid or a minister in the Lord’s Church. If you don’t have a joy and an excitement in the things I am saying then God has an offer for you today. “Today”, the apostle says “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion of Israel.”

For the rest of you, those who are excited about serving the Lord by living or by dying. Look around you. God’s Church is full of people who are like you. People who are willing to walk around the world barefoot if that is what the Lord called them to do. Feel the comradery in that. Feel the fellowship. Look around at your fellow soldiers. More mighty and victorious than any army that ever walked the face of the earth are we in Christ. Stop, and let that thought sink into your bones for a moment. There is no force on earth that can stop the armies of the Lord. The suffering saints will be triumphant.

What Is Owed Us?

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Like everything else in Christianity, communion is never owed to the Christian. There is a large temptation when seeking after God, to think, “If I do this particular thing, then God will owe me his presence.” The older, wiser Christian learns that this is wrong fairly quickly, but then often gets stuck in a more mature version of the same thought: “If I do this particular thing, with the right attitude, then God will owe me his presence.” This is just as wrong as the first thought.

How long will it be, until we learn the truth of the words, “Apart from me you can do nothing.”

The beginning of that phrase says this, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

I often mistakenly look at this as a commandment that can be followed. If I abide in God, then I will be able to do things. So I must first abide in God. That must be something I, in my own power, am able to do. If not in my own power, then there must be something that I can do, that God will always reward by drawing near to me. In my experience, there is no such thing. Instead, the words, “Apart from me you can do nothing” apply even to our abiding with God.

What must we do then? Apply the principle taught in 2Tim 2:24-25(ref). We read our Bibles, we pray, we do everything we can to humble ourselves and exult in the Lord. Yet even in all of that, God will likely never draw near if we say to ourselves; “Look at what a good job I am doing.” Instead, say to yourself, “God may perhaps grant me repentance.” It is not owed for our service, but God delights to give it, so we wait on it, we look for it around every corner.

Then, so often, it comes. It comes unexpectedly: in my experience, always unexpectedly. Joy floods in.

God, may we have this attitude in everything we do, that we will, in humility, run hard after you, saying all the while, “God may perhaps grant repentance.”

Let us Kill Him and Have His Inheritance

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Matthew 21:38

38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ (ESV)

Is this not the voice of our sin? “Come let us put the Christ to death and have His inheritance.” Christ’s inheritance is all things: every rule, authority, power, and created thing is His. Lovingly, He offers us brotherhood in this, that we might share in His inheritance. He is not a stingy bridegroom, but offers His bride to share in his wealth. Yet we would have this wealth without the Christ. We would crucify Him and have the treasure all to ourselves.

If we would treasure Christ as our highest treasure, we would have the treasure for which we seek, and we would be heirs with Christ to inherit the whole world. Instead of this, we become like the tenants;

“Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.”

Look at the fulfillment of this parable in the crucifixion of Christ.

The inheritance of Christ is peace. The tenants sought peace by killing the only one who could bring it.

The inheritance of Christ is a kingdom. The tenants sought to build the kingdom by killing the one to whom it belonged.

The inheritance of Christ is a Church. The tenants sought to safeguard the temple for themselves by killing one who would fill it with his own glory.

The inheritance of Christ is authority. The tenants lusted after this authority to establish their own traditions.

“This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.”

What is it that we lust after? Fame, fortune, honor, power? These all belong to Christ. Only a thief tries to posses what belongs to another. What will God do to such thieves? Verse 41, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death.”

This is all of us, myself especially. I am the wicked tenant. I am the thief, for I have sought the inheritance that is Christ’s alone. Forbid it Lord that I should continue as such.

If God Loves Me, Why Don’t I Suffer

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During a pastor’s conference in 1999, in response to a question regarding the lack of persecution in America, John Piper said the following:

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Avoidance ethics, avoidance ethics, is probably not what Paul meant by; “Those who desire to be Godly will be persecuted (2Tim. 3:12).” I think Godliness is such a radical God-orientation that you are freed from the things of this world for risk-taking, big time, in love.

[skipped portion]

I just think radical godliness will get you in trouble, and then you wont have to ask the question you just asked anymore, and neither will I.
(source)

In other words, if we loved like Christ loved, we would be persecuted (John 15:20). Or, stated negatively, some Christians are not persecuted more because they don’t love more. That is a concerning thought.

Oh, for God-likeness. Oh that I, even I, could be made like Christ, conforming to His perfect holiness.

Here are some more verses to consider along these lines:
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