Archives: June 2008

I stumbled upon this section from John Piper’s article, “What God Requires, Christ Provides,” and found it extremely helpful:

For the Sake of My Family: Marriage

“I have a family to care for. My marriage must survive and thrive for the good of our children and the glory of Christ. God designed marriage to display the holy mercy of Christ and the happy submission of his church (see Eph. 5:21-25). Here the doctrine of justification by faith and the imputed righteousness of Christ can be a great marriage saver and sweetener.

Marriage seems almost impossible at times because both partners feel so self-justified in their expectations that are not being fulfilled. There is a horrible emotional dead end in the words, “But it’s just plain wrong for you to act that way,” followed by “That’s your perfectionistic perspective” or “Do you think you do everything right?” or by hopeless, resigned silence. The cycle of self-justified self-pity and anger can seem unbreakable.

But what if one or both partners becomes overwhelmed with the truth of justification by faith alone—and especially with the truth that in Christ Jesus God credits me, for Christ’s sake, as fulfilling all of his expectations? What happens if this doctrine so masters our souls that we begin to bend it from the vertical to the horizontal and apply it to our marriages? In our own imperfect efforts in this regard, there have been breakthroughs that seemed at times impossible. It is possible, for Christ’s sake, simply to say, “I will no longer think merely in terms of whether my expectations are met in practice. I will, for Christ’s sake, regard you the way God regards me—complete and accepted in Christ— and thus to be helped and blessed and nurtured and cherished, even if, in practice, you fail.” I know my wife treats me this way. And surely this is part of what Paul calls for when he says that we should forgive “one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32). There is more healing for marriage in the doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness than many of us have begun to discover.”

Do you ever just feel lost without a routine that keeps your head above the busyness of life? Yeah…that’s where I’m at. Longing for the routine, and being busy.

In his post, “Whoa… Is This for Real?!,” Thabiti rejoices in the progress of African-American opportunity because he “never thought [he'd] see the day” a black man was a presidential candidate. He gives an “unanticipated development” timeline that is very helpful.

Although Obama’s morality gives me pause, his presence gives me hope. Thabiti is a wonderful guide for helping us to see these issues more clearly.

“We need to distinguish between superficially similar words like assurance, conviction, presumption and bigotry. Conviction is the state of being convinced, and assurance of being sure, by adequate evidence or argument, that something is true. Presumption is a premature assumption of its truth, a confidence resting on inadequate or unexamined premises. Bigotry is both blind and obstinate; the bigot closes his eyes to the data and clings to his opinions regardless. Presumption and bigotry are incompatible with any serious concern for truth and with worship of the God of truth. At least some degree of Christian conviction and assurance, however, is both compatible and reasonable, for it is grounded on good historical evidence or, as the New Testament writers call it, ‘witness’. The verbs to ‘know’ and ‘believe’ and ‘be persuaded’ are liberally sprinkled throughout the New Testament. Faith and confidence are regarded as norms of Christian experience, not as exceptions. Indeed, the apostles and evangelists not infrequently tell their readers that the purpose of what they are writing (whether their personal testimony to Jesus or that of other eye-witnesses) is ‘that you may know’ or ‘that you may believe.’

• “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. ” (Luke 1:1-4 ESV).
• “but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:31 ESV).
• “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 John 5:13 ESV).

A Christian mind asks questions, probes problems, confesses ignorance, feels perplexity, but does these things within the context of a profound and growing confidence of the reality of God and of his Christ. We should not acquiesce in a condition of basic and chronic doubt, as if it were characteristic of Christian normality. It is not. It is rather a symptom of spiritual sickness in our spiritually sick age” (From John Stott’s, Between Two Worlds, 86-87)