Regarding Trials

"It is said that in some countries trees will grow, but will bear no fruit because there is no winter there."

John Bunyan

I am Totally His

I am His by purchase and I am His by conquest; I am His by donation and I am His by election; I am His by covenant and I am His by marriage; I am wholly His; I am peculiarly His; I am universally His; I am eternally His. Once I was a slave but now I am a son; once I was dead but now I am alive; once I was darkness but now I am light in the Lord; once I was a child of wrath, an heir of hell, but now I am an heir of heaven; once I was Satan's bond-servant but now I am God's freeman; once I was under the spirit of bondage but now I am under the Spirit of adoption that seals up to me the remission of my sins, the justification of my person and the salvation of my soul.

Thomas Brooks

The Death of Christ

"Christ did not die for any upon the condition, if they do believe;

but He died for all God's elect, that they should believe."

John Owen

Great Quote from John Flavel

"Christ is the very essence of all delights and pleasures, the very soul and substance of them. As all the rivers are gathered into the ocean, which is the meeting-place of all the waters in the world, so Christ is that ocean in which all true delights and pleasures meet."

The Imputed Righteousness of Christ

Here is a link to my notes from a message that I had shared at a men's breakfast about a year ago. I feel that it was one of the most important messages that I had ever shared. The topic is on: "The Imputed Righteousness of Christ", the neglected side of Justification. I hope and trust you will be edified by reading it.

http://home.comcast.net/~dougpatton2/ImputedRighteousness.html

Man's Chief End is to Glorify God

This excerpt with taken from "The Body of Divinity" by Thomas Watson. It is convicting, but very good.

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We glorify God by being contented in that state in which Providence has placed us. We give God the glory of his wisdom, when we rest satisfied with what he carves out to us. Thus Paul glorified God. The Lord cast him into as great variety of conditions as any man, "in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft," 2 Cor. 11:23, yet he had learned to be content. Paul could sail either in a storm or a calm; he could be anything that God would have him; he could either want or abound, Phil. 4:13. A good Christian argues thus: It is God that has put me in this condition; he could have raised me higher, if he pleased, but that might have been a snare to me: he has done it in wisdom and love; therefore I will sit down satisfied with my condition. Surely this glorifies God much; God counts himself much honoured by such a Christian. Here says God, is one after mine own heart; let me do what I will with him, I hear no murmuring, he is content. This shows abundance of grace. When grace is crowning, it is not so much to be content; but when grace is conflicting with inconveniences, then to be content is a glorious thing indeed. For one to be content when he is in heaven is no wonder; but to be content under the cross is like a Christian. This man must needs bring glory to God; for he shows to all the world, that though he has little meal in his barrel, yet he has enough in God to make him content: he says, as David, Psalm 16:5, "The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance; the lines are fallen to me in pleasant places."

- Thomas Watson

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This reminded me of Ps 73:26 where the Word says, "My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."

I am also reminded of Lam 3:24-25 where scripture says, "I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him." The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him;

Martyn Lloyd Jones regarding Our Accounting

Do not keep a record or an account of your work. Give up being book-keepers. In the Christian life we must desire nothing but His glory, nothing but to please Him. So do not keep your eye on the clock, but keep it on Him and His work. Do not keep on recording your work and labour, keep your eye on Him and His glory, on His love and His honour and the extension of His kingdom. . . . Have no concern as to how many hours you have given to the work, nor how much you have done. In effect leave the bookkeeping to Him and to His grace. . . . There is no need to waste time keeping the accounts, He is keeping them. And what wonderful accounts they are. May I say it with reverence, there is nothing I know of that is so romantic as God's method of accountancy. Be prepared for surprises in this Kingdom. . . .
Let me make a personal confession. This kind of thing has often happened to me in my ministry. Sometimes God has been gracious on a Sunday and I have been conscious of exceptional liberty, and I have been foolish enough to listen to the devil when he says, 'Now, then, you wait until next Sunday, it is going to be marvellous, there will be even larger congregations'. And I go into the pulpit the next Sunday and I see a smaller congregation. But then on another occasion I stand in the pulpit labouring, . . . preaching badly and utterly weak, and the devil has come and said: 'There will be nobody there at all next Sunday'. But, thank God, I have found on the following Sunday a larger congregation. . . . You never know. I enter the pulpit in weakness and I end with power. I enter with self-confidence and I am made to feel a fool. It is God's accountancy. . . . He is always giving us surprises. . . .
We should not only recognize that it is all of grace, but rejoice in the fact that it is so. . . . The secret of the happy Christian life is to realize that it is all of grace and to rejoice in that fact. . . . Was not this [Jesus'] own way? . . . He did not look at Himself, He did not consider Himself and His own interests only; He made Himself of no reputation, He laid aside the insignia of His eternal glory. . . . He humbled Himself, He forgot Himself, and He went through and endured and did all He did, looking only to the glory of God. Nothing else mattered to Him but that the Father should be glorified and that men and women should come to the Father. That is the secret. Not watching the clock, not assessing the amount of work, not keeping a record in a book, but forgetting everything except the glory of God, the privilege of being called to work for Him at all, the privilege of being a Christian, remembering only the grace that has ever looked upon us and removed us from darkness to light.
It is grace at the beginning, grace at the end. So that when you and I come to lie upon our deathbeds, the one thing that should comfort and help and strengthen us there is the thing that helped us at the beginning. Not what we have been, not what we have done, but the grace of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. The Christian life starts with grace, and it must continue with grace, it ends with grace. Grace, wondrous grace.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures, (Eerdmans, 1965) p. 130-32.

Recommended Article

I read this article on my friend Joe's blog (The Potter's Clay).

It was written by John Piper and it is well worth reading.

Was Katrina Intelligent Design?

Psalm 36:6

Ps 36:6 Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. O LORD, you preserve both man and beast.

This photo was taken while hiking at Mount Rainier this summer. What an awesome God we serve.

Concerning Anxiety by Arthur W. Pink

"Be anxious for nothing"

Philippians 4:6

Worrying is as definitely forbidden as theft. This needs to be carefully pondered and definitely realized by us, so that we do not excuse it as an innocent "infirmity." The more we are convicted of the sinfulness of anxiety, the sooner are we likely to perceive that it is most dishonoring to God, and "strive against" it (Heb. 12:4). But how are we to "strive against" it?

First, by begging the Holy Spirit to grant us a deeper conviction of its enormity. Second, by making it a subject of special and earnest prayer, that we may be delivered from this evil. Third, by watching its beginning, and as soon as we are conscious of harassment of mind, as soon as we detect the unbelieving thought, lift up our heart to God and ask Him for deliverance from it.

The best antidote for anxiety is frequent meditation upon God’s goodness, power and sufficiency. When the saint can confidently realize "The Lord is My Shepherd," he must draw the conclusion, "I shall not want!" Immediately following our exhortation is, "but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known unto God." Nothing is too big and nothing is too little to spread before and cast upon the Lord. The "with thanksgiving" is most important, yet it is the point at which we most fail. It means that before we receive God’s answer, we thank Him for the same: it is the confidence of the child expecting his Father to be gracious.

"Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought (anxious concern) for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?" "But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." (Matthew 6:25,33)

- A.W. Pink

What Ought to be Our Attitude Toward the Sovereignty of God?

It has been well said that "true worship is based upon recognized greatness, and greatness is superlatively seen in Sovereignty, and at no other footstool will men really worship." In the presence of the Divine King upon His throne even the seraphim 'veil their faces.' Divine sovereignty is not the sovereignty of a tyrannical Despot, but the exercised pleasure of One who is infinitely wise and good! Because God is infinitely wise He cannot err, and because He is infinitely righteous He will not do wrong. Here then is the preciousness of this truth. The mere fact itself that God's will is irresistible and irreversible fills me with fear, but once I realize that God wills only that which is good. My heart is made to rejoice. Here then is the final answer to the question (concerning our attitude toward God's sovereignty)—What ought to be our attitude toward the sovereignty of God? The becoming attitude for us to take is that of godly fear, implicit obedience, and unreserved resignation and submission. But not only so: the recognition of the sovereignty of God, and the realization that the Sovereign Himself is my Father, ought to overwhelm the heart and cause me to bow before Him in adoring worship. At all times I must say, "Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in Thy sight."

- A.W. Pink

Quote from John Owen

"The most tremendous judgment of God in this world is the hardening of the hearts of men."

- John Owen