february 2019 faithposting

“Oh child of suffering, be patient. God has not passed you over in His providence. He who is the feeder of sparrows will also furnish you with what you need. Take up the arms of faith against a sea of trouble. There is one who cares for you. His eye is fixed on you, His heart beats with pity for your woe, and His omnipotent hand will bring you the needed help. The darkest cloud will scatter itself in showers of mercy. The blackest gloom will give place to the morning. He, if you are one of His family, will bind up your wounds and heal your broken heart.”

— C.H. Spurgeon

My immediate terror upon reading this was, “I’m too sinful, too bad, too horrible. I can’t be one of His family.” But then I realized, how many times Jesus has already bound up my wounds and lifted me back to my feet, sternly but with love, tenderly but with great warning. I run to him weeping on a daily basis and He always dries my tears, and promises me we will try again, always, together. I hope, oh how I hope, I can stay part of His family. By His grace that is all I want, to be with Him, truly, always, here as well as in the hereafter.

"The word ‘revive’ means ‘to be restored to life.’ Revival can’t come to anything that hasn’t died! You want to see ‘revival”? You can start by dying to yourself!"
- Mattie Montgomery

This is SO fiercely hopeful!
Remember the Cross, and run to embrace it!

"Oh Lord, may I be directed what to do and what to leave undone." 
- Elizabeth Fry

Reading, studying, and meditating upon Scripture helps IMMENSELY. Humbly open your heart to the Holy Spirit speaking through God’s Word, and I assure you, you Will receive such direction.

"Even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity." 
-Joel 2:12-13

Amen!
May our holy fear and love of the Lord always move our poor hearts to return to Him with all humble and devout sincerity, every single time we stumble. He will receive us with open arms, and guide us in the way we should walk.

"Occupy your minds with good thoughts, or the enemy will fill them with bad ones." 
- St. Thomas More

I’ve realized this in raw experience lately. It’s very important to remember! Let us meditate always on the Lord and His Goodness, His Law, His Word, His Mercy… let us keep our minds and hearts and thoughts fixed on Him always!

"The unregenerate are seeking happiness, peace of mind, relief from guilt, a meaningful life, and a host of other things that we know only God can give them. But they are not seeking God. They are seeking the benefits of God. Natural man’s sin is precisely this: He wants the benefits of God without God Himself." 

- R.C. Sproul

 

This is so deep and so terrible. All addictions, all dishonest behavior, all sins spring from this. Even the most violent offenses begin with this single blasphemous desire, born from a lack of trust in God, a lack of love for God, that inevitably mutates into something utterly monstrous.
God is Joy, Peace, Forgiveness, Purpose, Love… God IS the Answer. That is the gloriously unalterable Truth, and ultimately every lie will crumble beneath its power. (Thanks be to God for that!!)

"Listen if you didn’t come to Jesus Christ broken over your sin, if you haven’t come to Jesus Christ literally shattered to the very depths of your being over your sinfulness, if you haven’t mourned over your sinfulness, if you don’t hunger and thirst after righteousness more than anything else there is a good probability that you’re not even a Christian." 

-John MacArthur

This hit me hard over the past few months.
I used to live a life of outrageous idolatry and now that I can see that sin, I have been crushed with mourning and fear of God and awareness of my terrible weakness and sinful nature and dishonorable life.
I was baptized a Christian but I was never truly a Christian, I am ashamed to admit. But Christ refused to let me stay that way. He broke me, He shattered me utterly, He starved me of my poisoned ‘food’ of sin and refused to let me be complacent or comfortable no matter how the world justified or approved my offenses. He chastised me severely, but he did not let me die, although many times I suffered so terrifically in my deserved consequence and guilt that in time, I realized I could not do anything but give it up, for to continue in it was inevitably death eternal. And so, wracked to my very bones, I desperately crawled to Him, time and time again, asking what have I done, what do I do now, can I ever be forgiven, can you show me the nature of my sin so I can stop, can you teach me the way I should walk instead, can you make me a Christian?
I fell thousands of times and he hauled me back up thousands of times, sometimes from the bloody dirt, sometimes so violently I thought my arms would dislocate. But it was always done in love, for if He had not delivered me so brutally quickly, I would have been drowned, devoured, destroyed beyond a doubt. He never gave up on me, incredibly so. And so I swear I will not, cannot, give up on Him. At the absolute least, He deserves that fidelity, unquestionably, even from a wretched sinner who stumbles more times than they step.
So this is my life now. I am daily humbling myself and letting Him scrub me clean. It is worth everything. No matter what my blackened, battered heart may fear, blind in its deluded pain. God is worth sacrificing everything else for, for He is the only thing that truly Is.

"There are to be seen among men, every here and there, unmistakable cases of a complete turning round of heart, character, tastes, and life,—cases which deserve no other name than that of conversion. I say when a man turns right round from sin to God,—from worldliness to holiness,—from self-righteousness to self-distrust,—from carelessness about religion to deep repentance,—from unbelief to faith,—from indifference to Christ to strong love to Christ,—from neglect of prayer, the Bible, and the Sabbath, to a diligent use of all means of grace,—I say boldly, that such a man is a converted man. When a man’s heart is turned upside down in the way I have described, so that he loves what he once hated, and hates what he once loved, I say boldly, that it is a case of conversion."  

-J.C. Ryle

I am in the midst of this right now, if I may dare to hope so powerfully, and thanks be to Almighty God for his tender terrible mercy and love in doing so for me! May He continue to have pity on my poor soul and grant me the grace to abandon all sinful desires and habits, and instead cling ever closer to Him! Amen!

"People can’t find God for the same reason that a robber can’t find the police." 
- Douglas Van Dorn

 

 

 

This is a powerful and terrible realization! We must examine our hearts constantly.
A robber will only “find the police” if he humbles himself to confess his wrongdoing, and surrenders himself to the deserved consequences of those crimes against love– remember the Prodigal Son’s words!– because only then, in true humbled honesty and self-denying contrition before Truth, will we receive mercy from the Just Judge, through the intercession of Jesus Christ, whose Spirit is who moves us TO come before Him as such.
A robber will remain a robber until he is moved to see himself as otherwise, to see a different future and sacrifice all for it. This movement is of God. May we pray for the Spirit’s intercession in our hearts to do the same in us, for all of our transgressions!

"Which gives you the most anxiety? Your sins or your misfortunes in life? That’s a good test. The one born of God is overwrought with his sin."  
- John MacArthur

This is because sin offends our beloved Savior so much. It is not a self-pitying anxiety, instead it is a mournful realization that our trespasses are thorns and nails to His most Sacred Heart. And yet, how He loves us! How He forgives us! How He still bears those pains for our sake, to deliver us from the grievous death wrought by those same injuries! So yes, such an anxiety over our sinful nature can give birth to holiness– but only if followed and folded in love for God. Realize that Jesus has died to save us from that same sin, and endeavor through prayer and trust in His grace to fill our hearts with such charity that we never offend Him again!!

 

In the life of St. Anthony, the following is related: during a violent conflict with the devil, the saint was suddenly illumined by an ineffable light in which the demons and their temptation vanished. Realizing that the Lord had come to him, Anthony cried, “Lord, where wast Thou all this time?” And he heard a Voice: “I was here, but I wanted to see your courage.”

I can attest to the truth of this. It gives me such powerful hope.