2010 - Oceanside, CA
I'm driving to Yosemite tonight with some friends, to stay the week in the valley and attempt Half Dome. Your prayers are always welcome!
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Yosemite
2010 - Oceanside
The following is a letter written to answer the painful question, "What do you do when your life has been shattered into a million little pieces?"
Hello, _____________,
I saw your post requesting how to mend a broken life.
How does one offer advice for what he has not experienced, or at least to someone who doubts his experience? I should not assume to have felt as deep or alike sorts of pain as you; how could one have certainty of such things? Perhaps a personal account would persuade you of our mutual troubles? For this reason I began to write a detailed story of one very awful portion of my life, but then thought to spare you of its unhappy length. Take my word, if you will, that unpleasant portions have lined my path as well. I have walked the knife-edge of believing not to live would be preferable to what I then felt in life. I suppose this is the extent of misery one may imagine, a point from which differences are merely darker shades of black.
2010 - Oceanside
I spoke tonight with a young man struggling to live consistently with his Christian faith. That makes two of us, as this has been in many ways the hardest five months of my spiritual life. Praise God, the Lord humbles us to realize that, left to ourselves, we would not abide for even one night.
Hearts aching from sins and shortcomings do well to draw often upon those potent phrases encapsulated in Romans 9, that believers are chosen from eternity "to be vessels of mercy." Vessels of what? How naturally we forget that God has not formed His New Covenant people primarily to contain their own legal glory, as stupendous servants brimming with spiritual success. While obedience is desirable, let us never forget that such is not the main ingredient for which the jar of Christian experience is fashioned.
From eternity the Lord purposed His saints to be empty and earthen, bare and brittle in themselves, so they might be filled with a great volume of the Father's pity and patience. Mercy is the necessary water for which "He shaped them unto glory." Mercy exemplified in regeneration and preservation of sinners is sufficient in itself to glorify the Lord. Into such vessels of mercy are saints daily being fashioned. After all this, if there should be a little obedience added to the waters of grace it will come as welcome flavor to sweeten the mixture all the more.
Such freedom does not promote sin but becomes the Christian's paradoxical deliverance from it, for faith in the gospel is the Spirit's ordained means by which He supplies us with strength to live holy lives. Certainly, a checklist of moral duties ought to be enough in itself to motivate creatures to holiness. But in our fallen state "the Law is weak through the flesh." Therefore Christian obedience must be supernaturally wrought. An appearance of rectitude may be kept up by striving of the will, but this will break in time. True sanctifying power will not flow from conviction that certain things must or must not be done, but from belief that regardless of our legal performance, we have been once for all accepted with God through the righteousness of Christ in our stead. By such faith the Spirit enables believers to live as sons moved by love, rather than as mercenaries of the Lord's legal scepter.
Faith in the gospel is simply to rest in Christ's welcoming promise, that in looking to Him we are received and secured on the basis of Christ's righteousness alone. Such faith is the conduit of Spiritual power to obey. But let it not be forgotten that Christians are designed chiefly to contain evidence of the Lord's gracious mercy. To reverse this order is to empty the original purpose of our calling.
Hearts aching from sins and shortcomings do well to draw often upon those potent phrases encapsulated in Romans 9, that believers are chosen from eternity "to be vessels of mercy." Vessels of what? How naturally we forget that God has not formed His New Covenant people primarily to contain their own legal glory, as stupendous servants brimming with spiritual success. While obedience is desirable, let us never forget that such is not the main ingredient for which the jar of Christian experience is fashioned.
From eternity the Lord purposed His saints to be empty and earthen, bare and brittle in themselves, so they might be filled with a great volume of the Father's pity and patience. Mercy is the necessary water for which "He shaped them unto glory." Mercy exemplified in regeneration and preservation of sinners is sufficient in itself to glorify the Lord. Into such vessels of mercy are saints daily being fashioned. After all this, if there should be a little obedience added to the waters of grace it will come as welcome flavor to sweeten the mixture all the more.
Such freedom does not promote sin but becomes the Christian's paradoxical deliverance from it, for faith in the gospel is the Spirit's ordained means by which He supplies us with strength to live holy lives. Certainly, a checklist of moral duties ought to be enough in itself to motivate creatures to holiness. But in our fallen state "the Law is weak through the flesh." Therefore Christian obedience must be supernaturally wrought. An appearance of rectitude may be kept up by striving of the will, but this will break in time. True sanctifying power will not flow from conviction that certain things must or must not be done, but from belief that regardless of our legal performance, we have been once for all accepted with God through the righteousness of Christ in our stead. By such faith the Spirit enables believers to live as sons moved by love, rather than as mercenaries of the Lord's legal scepter.
Faith in the gospel is simply to rest in Christ's welcoming promise, that in looking to Him we are received and secured on the basis of Christ's righteousness alone. Such faith is the conduit of Spiritual power to obey. But let it not be forgotten that Christians are designed chiefly to contain evidence of the Lord's gracious mercy. To reverse this order is to empty the original purpose of our calling.
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2010 - Russia
For reasons I don't understand, the situation of multitudes of Russians suffering from the flames of nationwide wildfire has hardly received the Western news attention it deserves. More than 15 billions dollars of damage is estimated, and one third of the wheat crop decimated in the disastrous fires.
This video is amongst the most harrowing scenes I've ever witnessed.
2010 - Oceanside
I believe the biggest issue facing the Church today is that pastors have
largely strayed from belief that it is God's word, clearly and
systematically exposited, which the early Church was first nourished upon, and is in need of today.
This is the "apostles doctrine," which is chiefly the revelation of a
distinction between Law and Gospel; a cyclic lifestyle of recognizing
guilt, embracing grace, and exhibiting gratitude. We suffer, I think,
from a lack of seeing Christ as Gospel and God, rather than the accessory
to our personal interests.
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Was this helpful? Please share with others. Thanks!
2010 - Oceanside
The story comes to mind of how I once met Sandra Bullock, the glitted star of such films as Speed, Miss Congeniality, and whatever else Hollywood paid her obscenely for. What brought the incident to mind was the following status post, by Amy Dunn:
"If the variation of my dreams have any weight on reality, apparently, Sandra Bullock and I would be very good friends upon our initial meeting."
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anecdotes
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Sandra Bullock
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