Reliance
My Father,
When thou art angry towards me for my wrongs
I try to pacify thee by abstaining from future sin;
But teach me
that I cannot satisfy thy law,
That this effort is resting in my righteousness,
that only Christ’s righteousness ready made,
already finished, is fit for that purpose;
that thy chastening me for my sin is not
that I should try to reform, but only
that I may be more humbled, afflicted and
separated from sin, by being reconciled,
and made righteous in Christ by faith;
that a sense of my sufficiency and ability in him
is one means of my being immovable;
that I can never be so by resting on my own faith,
but by trusting in thee as my only support,
by faith;
that if I cast away my faith I cast away thee,
for by faith I apprehend thee,
and as thou art very precious,
so is my faith very precious to me;
that I fall short of the purity thou requirest,
because in thinking I am holy I do not
seek holiness,
or, believing I am impotent, I do no more.
Humble me for not being as holy as I should be,
or as holy as I might be through Christ,
for thou art all, and to possess thee is to possess all.
But to make the creature something
is to make it stand between thee and me,
so that I do not walk humbly and holily.
Lord, forgive me for this.
2 comments:
did you write that? been wrestling with something i heard a speaker say last week at The Wrathful God seminar at Emory University - about how God's nature could only be revealed in creation, and it's our re-connecting with God that somehow completes both Him and us. interesting. i'm sure i botched up whatever intent the speaker had in mind...
i found a comment of yours at the challies.com website.
david and tim repeatedly delete my comments there, in my opinion quite unfairly. while i may come across a little rough-edged at times, i truly believe it's an unwillingness on their part to enter into legitimate, serious discussion that prompts their actions. i have been called a "troll" several times, but anyone reading the entire range of comments i've written can easily see that's not who i am.
i'm posting this to ask you to look at a recent interchange i had at a post there. i've captured the interchange on my blog; click on the link "challies angels" under the heading And Now The News on the right sidebar. i would appreciate any reaction you have after reading it - even of a critical nature.
and, if you're interested, i also have a lengthy (and still-in-progress) review of Tim Keller's recent book, The Reason for God. you can access it, too, in the And Now The News section. and, for what it's worth, i got a couple of emails from Tim that said some people had directed him to the review, and that he appreciated my interaction with his book. (i'm blushing...) needless to say, that put some welcome wind in my sails after all the head-butting i've been doing around the web...
thanks for reading.
mike rucker
fairburn, georgia, usa
mikerucker.wordpress.com
Mike,
No, I didn't write the content of this post, it comes from "The Valley of Vision".
I almost didn't publish your comment, since it doesn't appear to have any connection with the content of my original post. I will say that I am not interested in getting in the middle of any dispute that you are having on another blog.
You may not know this, but posting unrelated commentary, and enlisting others into ongoing disputes from other places, pretty much defines "troll" in the eyes of many.
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