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March 31 - June 9, 2019
when God opened their eyes wide enough for them to finally see it—they were appalled, horrified, grief-stricken.
The sight of her failings became the grief of her heart. And as soon as we’re struck by the same vision of ourselves, that’s when our first response can be the same as hers—faith, full release, sorrow, worship—knowing that His response will be the same as well:
the worst thing you can do is to try stuffing your sin, hoping nobody ever finds out who you really are. Turns out, the best way to avoid being found out a fake is just not to be one—to be open with people about your struggles, while being equally as open in your praise of God for what He’s making of you, despite your many messes and problems.
When the only person that truly knows all about us is the person who uses our hairbrush, we are easy pickings for the Enemy, ripe for being outmaneuvered and outsmarted.
Because even if we’re as much as 99 percent known
we are still not fully known.
But true sorrow over sin begs to be vented—both vertically to God and horizontally to others.
You have no shot at experiencing real change in life if you’re habitually protecting your image, hyping your spiritual brand, and putting out the vibe that you’re a lot more unfazed by temptation than the reality you know and live would suggest.
Even Satan himself cannot succeed at clobbering you with condemnation when the stuff he’s accusing you of doing is the same stuff you’ve been honestly admitting before God and...
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it propels us forward, stuns us back to sensibility, and points up by contrast with our disappointing counterfeits the beauties of what we’ve been missing and of what we now most desire.
In the end, godly grief produces within us such a hatred of our sin, we then receive from God the renewed motivation to actually turn from our sin.
the fruit of turning to God—before we sin, after we’ve sinned, even right there in the middle of our sin—is where Christians go to experience the flavors of God-fearing honor, gratitude, dependence, worship, confidence, trust, freedom, revival.
Even those sins from our past that have been the most regrettable, the most difficult to move beyond—the ones we’d give anything if we could go back and do over again—Christ is able to redeem and rewrite even those into masterful sequels and come-from-behind victories.
So if perhaps you’ve been thinking your job is to keep God impressed, or if you’ve grown so sick of what you’ve turned out to be that you’ve almost given up hope of ever trying to change this person anymore, realize there is “more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need [or who think they need] no repentance” (Luke 15:7).
And yet the deeper we go into what salvation entails and what it means, and the more we actually begin infusing its promises and benefits into every extremity of our lives—from fingertip to pinky toe—something remarkable happens to our belief.
They start to realize that it’s more than just something to believe.
The biblical idea of justification basically means that the gavel has banged down, and we’ve been totally pardoned—declared innocent
How in the world, then—based on the preponderance of evidence that could be displayed against us—could we get off with a not-guilty verdict?
The secret, of course—the mystery—is that the Judge has rendered His decision based not on what we’ve done, on our innocence (since “by works of the law no one will be justified”—Gal. 2:16), but on the sacrifice and willing substitution of the innocent, crucified Christ.
As a result—unbelievably—God has imputed to us (credited to us, ascribed to us, placed into our account) all the innocence and righteousness and perfection of Christ.
His resurrection (as if His crucifixion weren’t enough) provides all the objective evidence we need that proves His promises are true, that His ability to conquer death is real, and that His atonement for our sin is actively in force.
Both of these things were accomplished in a moment’s time.
He’s given us identity.
He has not only given you a new identity, He has given you His Spirit. And this Spirit of adoption “bears witness” that we are the “children of God” (Rom. 8:16).
A lot of times, the reason we struggle to feel and receive the love of God—to see ourselves as His beloved, adopted children—is because we’re not pursuing in our everyday lives those things His Word describes as being valuable and significant.
None of us would dare to say, of course, that we follow Him perfectly. We’ll never be flawless in the execution.
But is the desire there? Do we want it? Is our heart leaning in the direction of obedience and trust?
And the more consistently this happens—this again-and-again pursuit of Him—the more clearly the Spirit will bear witness “with our spirit” that we truly do belong to Him, that we are indeed the children of God.
Now if no desire is present—no interest in following God, no respect for Him as Father, no real inclination to do what He says—then, yes, it’s fair to question whether you’ve actually trusted Him for salvation.
And so when you sense the desire to obey your Father, when you set your face again toward doing His will—even after a season of missing it badly, seriously doubting His trustworthiness—that’s the Spirit of adoption you’re feeling, pulling you up close, listening to where you hurt, being honest enough to tell you the hard truth, yet smiling His grace and encouragement, then giving you a gentle, loving push back into the pursuit . . . and watching to be sure you’re okay out there.
The reason He can tell us to “count it all joy” when we meet “trials of various kinds” (James
is because He does some of His best work amid our worst pain.
Not just positional holiness, but manifest holiness. Friday afternoon at 5:00 holiness. Hanging out with your friends holiness. All by yourself at home holiness. Everywhere you are. Holiness.
From conversion to heaven. And all points in between. That’s where sanctification takes place—another
Sanctification is reserved only for God’s justified, adopted children.
And so the promise of sanctification is able to turn what may feel like a test today, like a trial by fire—like way more temptation or trouble than we can handle—into a muscle-building exercise that strengthens our spiritual core.
it’s something we lean into.
sanctification is an endeavor He undertakes in full cooperation and partnership with us. It requires us to exert what you might call “grace-driven effort”—made possible only by the merciful initiative of God, of course, and yet fully employing our human brains, brawn, and body parts as we go.
Sanctification is basically composed of these two elements: vivification and mortification.
basically means to quicken or animate, to bring to life.
this is what starts to happen to us spiritually when we “seek” or “set our minds” on those things “that are above, not on things that are on the earth”—when we spend time marinating in the fact that our very souls, right this minute, are “hidden with Christ in God”
Instead of believing lies, instead of nursing distortions, you can choose to dwell on the truths of the gospel, which you can be sure will always far transcend whatever’s trending on social media this afternoon.
In the mind is where vivification begins to build its head of steam.
Vivification involves filling ourselves with a renewed way of thinking, based on ultimate realities—those things that stir up our love, gratitude, and affections for Jesus—while getting our minds off the nagging, noisy combination of sound bites, bad advice, rumors, old wives’ tales, trivia, others’ opinions, devilish accusations, breaking news, and all the unholy influences we allow to rattle around in our brains all day, from beer commercials and movie trailers to temporary worries and a whole carousel of covetous desires.
If you can think of vivification as the life-giving plant food and fertilizer that you spade into your garden, mortification is the knuckle-busting process of pulling up the weeds. And you can’t do one without the other.
as you keep maturing in the faith and growing deeper into the sanctification process, that God’s Spirit will increasingly alert you to certain activities and environments of yours, certain habits and hobbies, that—even though they’re not morally wrong—are still personally detrimental to your own heart.
whatever reason—for you—there’s just a noticeable drag on your zeal for Christ that slips in when you do these things, or watch these things, or play around with these things, or get in the vicinity of these things. You can feel a palpable drift toward self-gratification and compromise after you’ve gone there.
we can grind the sanctification process to a snail’s pace if we don’t fully and willingly cooperate. God is patient, and He will keep working on us and with us. No need ever to doubt that. But we can drag this out and restrict ourselves from making much progress if we insist on doing it our own way.
One of the slowdowns
The conflict you’re having is not primarily about them; God is working in this conflict to reveal something about you.
