As the brook hides the footprints which are imprinted on its soft ooze, so are God’s footprints hidden. We cannot detect his great and wonderful secrets. He marches through the ages with steps we cannot track.

–F. B. Meyer, as seen in The One Year Book of Psalms on Psalm 77

Your path led through the sea,
your way through the mighty waters,
though your footprints were not seen.
Psalm 77:19

I prefer this type of quote to the Footprints In The Sand poem. I went to a site of someone claiming to be the author (which is still in dispute, apparently), just to take a look at the poem and was very disappointed to find out it’s mainly about the author’s fight for getting the copyright. I was hoping to find out about the author’s life as a Christian, but that didn’t seem to be an important enough to even mention. It’s interesting how the popular bits of “Christian” culture like this and the Prayer of Jabez can be so vacuous. I’ve heard first hand that the book below–which is a parody in addition to being educational–is excellent.

I’ve read that one possible reason that Christians, or those on the fringe of Christianity often like bad Christian books, is “because it impacts them in some significant way“ (see the Marturo blog). It may be a new way of seeing God, or a feeling of comfort. But when somebody reads The Shack, how likely are they then to keep reading other Christian books, and more importantly, keep wanting to know God better by reading [more] Scripture? In my limited experience, this is not the norm, and it breaks my heart. I’m very thankful that there are those who do go on from there. God uses those deeply flawed media, but those impactful experiences often fall on bad soil. (Matthew 13:3-23)

The latest popular thing was the TV series The Bible. I wonder how much will come out of that, or if it will become a classic? In any case, Jesus sure is good looking! I never realized he was used as the cover model of so many romance novels. And that slightly English accent sounds so theatrical.

How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD Almighty!
My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.
Psalm 84:1-2

FOR MODERN READERS PLAGUED by a negative view of the Old Testament in general and Old Testament law in particular, the book of Deuteronomy offers a healthy antidote. Through the work of Christ not only is Israel’s relationship made possible, but also the church, the new Israel of God, is grafted into God’s covenant promises. As with Israel, access to these promises remains by grace alone, through faith alone. However, having been chosen, redeemed, and granted covenant relationship, Yahweh’s people will gladly and without reservation demonstrate their allegiance to him wholeheartedly and with full-bodied obedience (Rom. 12: 1– 12).

For Christians today Deuteronomy remains an invaluable resource for a biblical understanding (1) of God, especially his grace in redeeming those bound in sin; (2) of the appropriate response to God, entailing love for God and for our fellow human beings; and (3) of the sure destiny of the redeemed. More than any other book in the Old Testament (if not the Bible as a whole), Deuteronomy concretizes the life of faith in real life. In the New Testament Jesus Christ, the incarnate God of Israel’s redemption, summarizes the spiritual, moral, and ethical pronouncements of Deuteronomy with the Supreme Command: to demonstrate covenant commitment to God with one’s entire being (love) and covenant commitment to one’s fellow human beings (Matthew 22: 34–40). Christians who live by this “law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2) will have their feet firmly on the ground and will resist the temptation to retreat into interior and subjective understandings of the life of faith so common in Western Christianity.

–Daniel Block, Deuteronomy (NIV Application Commentary, The) (Kindle Locations 734-746). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Hardcover Available)

We often think so much of the physical realm when interpreting some parts of Scripture and when we pray.

All of our visible blessings are but pale shadows of the real wealth that we can have if we live in continual communion with God. He does not put his best gifts in the store windows. He keeps those in the inner chambers. The best good is not the good that we can touch, taste, and handle and that men can see.

–Alexander MacLaren

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.
1 Timothy 6:17-19

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Colossians 3:1-4

Because if there is no wrath by God on sin, and there is no such thing as Hell, not only does that actually make what happened to Jesus inexplicable—Jesus staggering the way He is, asking God, “Is there any other way?” [and] sweating blood means that He was wimpier than hundreds of His followers, if there was nothing like [God’s wrath]—but…the main thing is, if you don’t believe in the wrath and Hell, it trivializes what He’s done…. If you get rid of a God who has wrath and Hell, you’ve got a god who loves us in general, but that’s not as loving as the God of the Bible, the God of Jesus Christ, who loves us with a costly love.

Look what it cost. Look what He did. Look what He was taking. You get rid of wrath and Hell, He’s not taking anything close to this. And therefore, what you’ve done is you’ve just turned His incredible act of love into just something very trivial, very small….

And by the way, if the anticipation of these sufferings—if the very taste of these sufferings—sent the Son of God into shock, what must it have been to drink them to the bottom?

–How Tim Keller Made Peace with the Wrath of God, a part of a quote from a post which is a quote from a sermon

This to me is a very sobering explanation of the “additional suffering” as I might call it, that Christ went through. This is what many of us didn’t know about (or might not yet realize) until later on in our knowledge of what Jesus accomplished on the cross.

In order to go along with this, one must believe in penal substitution, which I most definitely do. I do not believe that it’s “cosmic child abuse”, which John MacArthur responds to. If you would like to read more about it you can read a long treatment of the subject by J.I. Packer or a shorter one at 9Marks.

Praise God for loving the world in this way. I don’t know why He had to work it out this way. Maybe it’s to show the depth of His love for us.

When I praise God, each week He’s been showing me something new to praise Him for. One of the recent ones is that Jesus didn’t have to die on a cross. What was required was a blood sacrifice, meaning a death. Aside from prophecy, Jesus could have died by the sword, or literally drank a cup of poison. But more than the horrific death on a cross, He drank the cup of God’s wrath, as a sinless person, dying an unrighteous death in an unrighteous way by unrighteous people, and then being forsaken by his Father, which is far worse even than “just” dying on a cross, which was probably the worst way people were put to death.

It is absurd to think anything in us could have the least influence upon our election. Some say that God did foresee that such persons would believe and therefore did choose them; so they would make the business of salvation to depend upon something in us. Whereas God does not choose us FOR faith, but TO faith. ‘He hath chosen us, that we should be holy’ (Eph. 1:4), not because we would be holy, but that we might be holy. We are elected to holiness, not for it.

–Thomas Watson, All Things For Good, Puritan Paperbacks, Caps and Emphasis are his

I especially like, “God does not choose us FOR faith, but TO faith.” Or, God does not choose us for the faith that we will decide to have (even with prevenient grace), but chooses us to give us faith. “It is a gift from God, not by works” (Ephesians 2:8)

When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.”
Acts 3:26

(Remember, the subject line says this is a Reformed quote.)

Prevailing prayer is almost an impossibility where there is neglect of the study of the Word of God.

–R.A. Torrey

I like the CrossCards.com site.

I was looking around, hopefully not wasting time, and came across this wallpaper. I like the quote a lot and it really got me thinking. If we don’t know Scripture, we don’t know God’s will and our prayers may not be as effective. New Christians needn’t worry. God wants to hear all of our prayers and will help us learn what His will is according to Scripture.

1 John 5:14
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

I just like this photo and quote. It’s limited in the number of sizes if you want to use it, but I’m sure anyone with a graphics program could make it fit their computing device of choice.

This also reminds me that I have his book called How To Pray. My edition is over 100 years old that I found at a used bookstore. So I looked on Amazon and found that the Kindle edition is only 99 cents and also a low cost paperback and what I would hope is a nice hardcover. It has been reprinted many times so you can also find hardcover and paperback editions. It’s an excellent, basic book on prayer. Great for new believers and very good for anyone. He also has a section on what real revival is. One thing I like about the edition I have is that there is no Introduction, Preface, etc. etc. He just starts right off, wasting no time. A very efficient yet complete book on prayer. I won’t post a cover because there are so many of them I wouldn’t know what to choose.

~Jeff

I read about many lone ranger Christians who say it’s just them and the Holy Spirit. They don’t need denominations, ‘isms’ or creeds. They just learn what the Holy Spirit teaches them. See what Michael Horton says about that.

Many of these people see Calvinism as being arrogant. And the term “our theology” would seem to fit that supposition. But read on to find out what is meant by that.

I have written this book on the heels of another theology book entitled The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way.1 As I explained in the introduction to that book, the old Reformed theologians would sometimes refer to their summaries of the faith as “our theology.” They referred to it this way for two reasons. First, to indicate that what they were writing was distinct from God’s own self-understanding. This is why they would sometimes use the term ectypal when talking about their theology. Though it sounds somewhat technical, an ectype is simply a copy, with the archetype as the original. Talking about theology as “ectypal,” then, is a humble admission that only God’s own self-knowledge is original (archetypal). All that we say about God is a copy, subject to error. We will never know anything exactly as God knows it. Instead, we know things as he has revealed them to us, accommodating his knowledge to our feeble capacity to understand.

Second, the older theologians referred to their summary of faith as “our theology” to make it clear that it was not just “my theology” — their own individualistic understanding of God. To study theology involves entering into a long, ongoing conversation, one that we did not begin. Others have been talking about God long before you or I entered this discussion. We do not read the Bible somewhere off by ourselves in a corner; we read it as a community of faith, together with the whole church in all times and places.

Because our theological understanding is necessarily limited and finite, subject to our sinful biases, affections, and errors, I follow a venerable Christian tradition by referring to this volume as a “pilgrim theology” for those on the way — Christians who humbly seek to understand God but who are aware of their own biases and sinful tendencies to distort the truth. Older theologians used this term to distinguish our theological understanding from that of the glorified saints. A day will yet come when we are glorified and the effects of sin fully conquered, and our understanding of God will be fuller, more complete. Even in this condition, however, we will still be finite and our theology will remain ectypal — creaturely. Yet it will no longer be a theology for pilgrims. It will no longer be subject to sinful error. Then, we shall know, even as we are fully known.

Pilgrim Theology, CORE DOCTRINES FOR CHRISTIAN DISCIPLES by
Michael Horton

Also:
For those who say, “The Bible is my creed”, listen to what Carl Trueman has to say about all of this.

Creeds demonstrate doctrinal competence.

–Carl Trueman

Suddenly the Christian doctrine of the love of God becomes very difficult, for the entire framework in which it is set in Scripture has been replaced.

To put this another way, we live in a culture in which many other and complementary truths about God are widely disbelieved. I do not think that what the Bible says about the love of God can long survive at the forefront of our thinking if it is abstracted from the sovereignty of God, the holiness of God, the wrath of God, the providence of God, or the personhood of God—to mention only a few nonnegotiable elements of basic Christianity.

The result, of course, is that the love of God in our culture has been purged of anything the culture finds uncomfortable. The love of God has been sanitized, democratized, and above all sentimentalized.

–D.A. Carson

I love this quote and I think about this a lot. There are a lot of attributes of God in addition to love that are ignored or minimized. The greatest may be love, but God is also all of those other things. He isn’t just love. That’s not the only part of His essence. A whole other story is why this is–ignorance of the Old Testament (not that it shows God’s bad side–it shows his love as much as anywhere–but it’s almost 4/5ths of the Bible which is a lot of knowledge of God), forgetting the wrath of Jesus, not noticing the things Paul writes, being too confounded by Revelation to read it, etc., but mainly what people want to think.

There are no sins God’s people are more subject to than unbelief and impatience. They are ready either to faint through unbelief, or to fret through impatience. When men fly out against God by discontent and impatience it is a sign they do not believe this text. Discontent is an ungrateful sin, because we have more mercies than afflictions; and it is an irrational sin, because afflictions work for good. Discontent is a sin which puts us upon sin. ‘Fret not thyself to do evil’ (Psalm 37:8). He that frets will be ready to do evil: fretting Jonah was sinning Jonah (Jonah 4:9). The devil blows the coals of passion and discontent, and then warms himself at the fire. Oh, let us not nourish this angry viper in our breast. Let this text produce patience, ‘All things work for good to them that love God’ (Rom. 8:28). Shall we be discontented at that which works for our good? If one friend should throw a bag of money at another, and in throwing it, should graze his head, he would not be troubled much, seeing by this means he had got a bag of money. So the Lord may bruise us by afflictions, but it is to enrich us. These afflictions work for us a weight of glory, and shall we be discontented?

–Thomas Watson, All Things for Good (Puritan Paperbacks)

~Jeff

“For my own part,” wrote Lewis, “I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that `nothing happens’ when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.”

–C.S. Lewis

I feel this way now although 1) I got a lot out of Oswald Chambers devotionals in the past and 2) There are some very good, meaty devotionals out there now. But I would rather read a chapter of Calvin’s Institutes each day, which is only about two pages, or a commentary or Puritan theology or something of the sort.

The smallest germ of faith contains assurance in its very essence, even when the believer is not always able to grasp this assurance due to weakness. The Christian may be tossed about with doubt and perplexity, but the seed of faith, implanted by the Spirit, cannot perish. Precisely because it is the Spirit’s seed, faith retains assurance. The assurance increases and decreases in proportion to the rise and decline of faith’s exercises, but the seed of faith can never be destroyed. Calvin says: “The root of faith can never be torn from the godly breast, but clings so fast to the inmost parts that, however faith seems to be shaken or to bend this way or that, its light is never so extinguished or snuffed out that it does not at least lurk as it were beneath the ashes.” (Institutes 3.2.21)

–Joel R. Beeke, A Theological Guide to Calvin’s Institutes: Essays and Analysis

Cast your cares on the LORD
and he will sustain you;
he will never let the righteous be shaken.
Psalms 55:22

A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out,
till he leads justice to victory.
Matthew 12:20

Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed from that moment. Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” He replied, “Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
Matthew 17:18-20

In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
1 John 5:3-5

My dear friends, you have always obeyed, not only when I was with you but even more now that I’m absent. In the same way continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. 13 It is God who produces in you the desires and actions that please him.
Philippians 2:12-13

A song by Solomon for going up to worship. If the LORD does not build the house, it is useless for the builders to work on it. If the LORD does not protect a city, it is useless for the guard to stay alert.
Psalm 127:1

[W]hat is the psalmist teaching us? He is teaching us that we are both fully responsible and fully dependent.

–Jerry Bridges, The Transforming Power of the Gospel

What then does it mean today to resolve to know nothing… except Jesus Christ and him crucified? More narrowly, what elements in our ministries need overhauling when judged by this standard? For this commitment must not only shape our message but our style.

We have become so performance- oriented that it is hard to see how compromised we are. Consider one small example. In many of our churches, prayers in morning services now function, in large measure, as the time to change the set in the sanctuary. The people of the congregation bow their heads and close their eyes, and when they look up a minute later, why, the singers are in place, or the drama group is ready to perform. It is all so smooth. It is also profane. Nominally we are in prayer together addressing the King of heaven, the sovereign Lord. In reality, some of us are doing that while others are rushing on tiptoes around the stage and others, with their eyes closed, are busy wondering what new and happy configuration will confront them when it is time to take a peek.

Has the smoothness of the performance become more important to us than the fear of the Lord? Has polish, one of the modern equivalents of ancient rhetoric, displaced substance? Have professional competence and smooth showmanship become more valuable than sober reckoning over what it means to focus on Christ crucified?

–D. A. Carson

Unlike the psalmist himself, we cannot sing the laments. Even when they use the psalms, our contemporary praise choruses pick out the upbeat notes but don’t know what to do with that blue note.

In contemporary piety and worship, discordant keys are not allowed; just keep it happy. Our public worship today is a fatal index of the fact that we do not know what to do in the presence of a God who is not only our friend but also our judge. We do not know what to do with sin, evil, and death in this culture, but by suppressing the question we deprive people of the comfort that comes from the answer.

–Michael Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

I have tried these thirty-two-and-a-half years to lead the staff and the elders and you in the experience of sorrowful yet always rejoicing. I turn with dismay from church services that are treated like radio talk shows where everything sounds like chipper, frisky, high-spirited chatter designed to make people feel lighthearted and playful and bouncy. I look at those services and say to myself: Don’t you know that people are sitting out there who are dying of cancer, whose marriage is a living hell, whose children have broken their hearts, who are barely making it financially, who have just lost their job, who are lonely and frightened and misunderstood and depressed? And you are going to try to create an atmosphere of bouncy, chipper, frisky, light-hearted, playful worship?

And, of course, there will be those who hear me say that and say: O, so you think what those people need is a morose, gloomy, sullen, dark, heavy atmosphere of solemnity?

No. What they need is to see and feel indomitable joy in Jesus in the midst of suffering and sorrow. “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” They need to taste that these church people are not playing games here. They are not using religion as a platform for the same-old, hyped-up self-help that the world offers every day. They need the greatness and the grandeur of God over their heads like galaxies of hope. They need the unfathomable crucified and risen Christ embracing them in love with blood all over his face and hands. And they need the thousand-mile-deep rock of God’s word under their feet.

John Piper, Sorrowful Yet Always Rejoicing – Desiring God

I was once told of the minister who sat in his car before he went away and prayed ‘Please Lord look after the church while I’m gone’, to which the Lord supposedly replied ‘Who do you think looks after it while you’re here.’ Now of course we know that’s not true but do we? There are many Christian leaders who talk about God speaking to them audibly, my question is what accent does he have? Could you have recorded it?

God speaks clearly, finally, definitively in the Bible. The Holy Spirit takes the Word of Scripture and speaks to us but not in an audible voice. The Holy Spirit comforts, bears witness with our Spirit, he is the revealer and enlightener of Scripture but does he speak audibly and does he do that often? I would have huge doubts.

What accent does God have? – Reformation21 Blog

The Preacher says, “Do not be rash with your mouth, and let not your heart utter anything hastily before God. For God is in heaven, and you on earth” (Ecclesiastes 5:2 NKJV). Some bold souls who forget this try to storm heaven’s gates and search God’s secret chambers. “God told me to move to Kansas,” they then announce. “God gave me a revelation for you.” “God will heal your son.” This is the sort of thing against which God commanded Jeremiah to warn Israel, and essentially the charge against the “false prophets” is that they have used God instead of confining themselves to his word:

I did not send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied…Am I a God at hand, declares the LORD, and not a God afar off?…Behold, I am against the prophets, declares the LORD, who use their tongues and declare, “declares the LORD.” Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, declares the LORD, and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness.

Jeremiah 23:21, 23, 31–32

Michael Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

We can learn how God wants us to live and ‘hear’ him speak to us every time we open up the Bible and read it. We might not always get a revelation of something we never realized before or have some bit of knowledge crash into our head (that’s what it feels like sometimes) but it’s always ‘profitable’ for us to do and the Holy Spirit will always use it. God is living and active through Scripture and it breaks my heart that many people don’t want to hear God speak to them.

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
Hebrews 4:12

Always strive to have an imbalance in your heart where the desire to love outdistances the desire to be loved: “This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” (1 John 3:11, 16)

–Ed Welch, Running Scared

I quote this with great hypocrisy.