More Encouragement for Those Who Struggle

This Song From NEXT2010 for Those Battling the Effects of Sin

Lyrics:

Not a single spot
Not a single stain
Not a single blemish
Now remains
You have been washed clean
With the blood of Jesus Christ
And if your trust is in Him
You are righteous in my eyes

And though there is a battle
Though you fight the war
There are temporary pleasures
That’s not what you were made for
There are everlasting pleasures
That are waiting at my hand
And I only give joy
That will never ever end.

And if you fall again
My forgiveness will remain
For your debt is paid in full
And my love will never change
So trust in me each moment
For what you cannot do
For I’ll give you strength to conquer
For your life has been made new
I’ll give you strength to conquer
For your life has been made new.

And even more encouragement here.

An Encouragement to All Who Struggle

John Newton, writing to his good friend, the Rev. William Bull, gives this description of his struggle with an unwelcome "lodger":

I have many pleasant and kind connections; but I have a troublesome inmate, a lodger, who assumes as if the house were his own, and is a perpetual incumbrance, and spoils all. He has long been noted for his evil ways; but though generally known, is not easily avoided. He lodged with one Saul of Tarsus long before I was born, and made him groan and cry out lustily. Time was when I thought I would shut the door, to keep him out of my house, but my precaution came too late; he was already within ; and to turn him out by head and shoulders is beyond my power; nay, I cannot interdict him from any one single apartment. If I think of retiring into the closest corner, he is there before me. We often meet and jostle and snarl at each other; but sometimes (would you believe it ?) I lose all my suspicion, and am disposed to treat him as an intimate friend. This inconsistency of mine I believe greatly encourages him, for I verily believe he would be ashamed and afraid to be seen by me, if I always kept him at a proper distance. However, we both lay such a strong claim to the same dwelling, that I believe the only way of settling the dispute will be (which the Landlord himself has spoken of) to pull down the house over our heads. There seems something disagreeable in this mode of proceeding ; but from what I have read in an old book, I form a hope that when things come to this crisis, I shall escape, and my enemy will be crushed in the ruins.

June 7, 1783

If the author of "Amazing Grace" experienced the constant struggle against the sin nature (as described in Romans 7), why would we think that we would be exempt? Oh for that day when the building is pulled down and we are lifted up!

Sobering Words

And that you may see that it is not a causeless sorrow that God requireth of us, I shall call to your remembrance our manifold sins, and set them in order before you, that we may deal plainly and faithfully in a free confession of them, and that God who is ‘faithful and just may forgive them, and cleanse us from all iniquity.’ In this I suppose I have your hearty consent, and that you will be so far from being offended with me, though I should disgrace your persons, and others in this office, that you will readily subscribe the charge, and be humble self-accusers; and so far am I from justifying myself by the accusation of others, that I do unfeignedly put my name with the first in the bill of indictment. For how can a wretched sinner, one chargeable with so many and so great transgressions, presume to justify himself before God? Or how can he plead guiltless, whose conscience hath so much to say against him? If I cast shame upon the ministry, it is not on the office, but on our persons, by opening that sin which is our shame. The glory of our high employment doth not communicate any glory to our sin; for ‘sin is a reproach to any people.’ And be they pastors or people, it is only they that ‘confess and forsake their sins that shall have mercy,’ while ‘he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief.’

(pg. 134-135, The Reformed Pastor by Richard Baxter)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

Had he not been assassinated in April of 1968 it is possible that Dr. King would be alive today, and would have just celebrated his 79th birthday. It is difficult to imagine what he would think of the present state of race relations in America today.

He would certainly see that overt racism as characterized by the following section of his Letter from Birmingham Jail is no longer acceptable to many Americans. In 1963 he wrote:

We have waited .for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God- given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six- year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

Yet, at the same time I believe that he would strive against the covert racism that still pervades our society. Most people today don't voice the racial slurs and insults, but there are still too many who think these things, and worse yet act on them. Dr. King's dream is not yet realized. We have yet to "live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal'." Worse yet, this is not only an American problem, it is still, to some extent, and to our shame, a problem in our churches.

Today is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday and tomorrow is the Martin Luther King holiday. Both exist because of the assaults against the dignity of life that characterize our society. Both days should cause Christians to examine our hearts and confess our sins of devaluing the worth of people whether by neglect, greed, hatred, anger, racism, or selfishness.

Valley of Vision - Self-Noughting

"Self-Noughting" may require some translation for the 21st century reader. Nought (or more commonly naught) is an archaic term for "nothing" or "zero", thus "Self-Noughting" is self deprecation or self denial.

O Lord,
Help me to approach thee
with becoming conception of thy nature,
relations and designs.
Thou inhabitest eternity, and
my life is nothing before thee;
Thou dwellest in the highest heaven and
this cannot contain thee;
I live in a house of clay.
Thy power is almighty;
I am crushed before the moth.
Thy understanding is infinite;
I know nothing as I ought to know.
Thou canst not behold evil;
I am vile.
In my ignorance, weakness, fears, depressions,
may thy Spirit help my infirmities
with supplies of wisdom, strength and comfort.
Let me faithfully study my character,
be willing to bring it to light,
observe myself in my trials,
judge the reality and degree of my grace,
consider how I have been ensnared or overcome.
Grant that I may never trust my heart,
depend upon any past experiences,
magnify any present resolutions,
but be strong in the grace of Jesus:
that I may know how to obtain relief
from a guilty conscience
without feeling reconciled to my imperfections.
Sustain me under my trials
and improve them to me;
give me grace to rest in thee,
and assure me of deliverance.
May I always combine thy majesty
with thy mercy,
and connect thy goodness
with thy greatness.
Then shall my heart always rejoice
in praise to thee.

These are words that we need to remember daily. Posted on the wall in front of my desk (where I can read it every workday) is this small prayer as a reminder:

I know not what difficulties, or trials, or temptations, may be before me this day. Prepare me whether for duty or for conflict. Knowing the treachery of the heart, I desire this morning, and each morning, to receive fresh supplies of your grace.

May we be ever mindful of the treachery of our hearts and depend upon Christ, and Christ alone, for the grace that we need daily.

Valley of Vision - The Broken Heart

A fitting companion to Chapter 9 of the Bruised Reed, from The Valley of Vision.

The Broken Heart

O Lord,

No day of my life has passed that has not
proved me guilty in thy sight,
Prayers have been uttered from a
prayerless heart;
Praise has been often praiseless sound;
My best services are filthy rags.
Blessed Jesus, let me find a covert in thy appeasing
wounds.
Though my sins rise to heaven thy merits soar
above them;
Though unrighteousness weighs me down to hell,
thy righteousness exalts me to thy throne.
All things in me call for my rejection,
All things in thee plead my acceptance.
I appeal from the throne of perfect justice
to thy throne of boundless grace.
Grant me to hear thy voice assuring me;
that by thy stripes I am healed,
That thou wast bruised for my iniquities,
that thou hast been made sin for me
that I might be righteous in thee,
that my grievous sins, my manifold sins,
are all forgiven,
buried in the ocean of thy concealing blood.
I am guilty, but pardoned,
lost, but saved,
wandering, but found,
sinning, but cleansed.
Give me perpetual broken-heartedness,
Keep me always clinging to thy cross,
Flood me every moment with descending grace,
Open to me the springs of divine knowledge,
sparkling like crystal,
flowing clear and unsullied
through my wilderness of life.

Weekly Puritan - Valley of Vision

Confession and Petition
Holy Lord,
I have sinned times without number,
and been guilty of pride and unbelief,
of failure to find thy mind in thy Word,
of neglect to seek thee in my daily life.
My transgessions and short-comings
present me with a list of accusations,
But I bless thee that they will not stand against me,
for all have been laid on Christ;
Go on to subdue my corruptions,
and grant me grace to live above them.
Let not the passions of the flesh nor lustings
of the mind bring my spirit into subjection,
but do thou rule over me in liberty and power.
I thank thee that many of my prayers have been refused-
I have asked amiss and do not have,
I have prayed from lusts and been rejected,
I have longed for Egypt and been given a wilderness.
Go on with thy patient work,
answering 'no' to my wrongful prayers,
and fitting me to accept it.
Purge me from every false desire,
every base aspiration,
everything contrary to thy rule.
I thank thee for thy wisdom and thy love,
for all the acts of discipline to which I am subject,
for sometimes putting me into the furnace
to refine my gold and remove my dross.
No trial is so hard to bear as a sense of sin.
If thou shouldst give me choice to live
in pleasure and keep my sins,
or to have them burnt away with trial,
give me sanctified affliction.
Deliver me from every evil habit,
every accretion of former sins,
everything that dims the brightness
of thy grace in me,
everything that prevents me taking delight
in thee.
Then I shall bless thee, God of Jeshurun,
for helping me to be upright.
(Valley of Vision, page 138)

This is a dangerous prayer. Let me repeat that so that it sinks in: "This is a DANGEROUS prayer."

How many of us thank God for placing us in the furnace of affliction in order to have our dross burned off and our gold refined? How many of us seek "sanctified affliction"?

What a contrast to the prosperity preachers who tell you that this year is your year of jubilee and that God is only interested in pouring blessing into your corrupt shell. May we pray dangerously this year, and seek His will even at the expense of our comfort. May we receive a resounding 'NO' from God when we pray amiss.