Repost: I Know He's Angry

I'm listening to John Piper's series on Romans. http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/by-series/romans-the-greatest-letter-ever-written

I'm 2/3's of the way through it. I find it astonishing that it was delivered in 1998. It's as real and potent to me now as though it were the day it was said. God is real, and this is proof. I fully recommend that you listen to it.

 

Dear Daddy,

I know that you're angry:

he's angry with me

I don't desire God because I'm unrighteous

I cannot know Godliness because 

I'm in love with sin, I'm in love with

distortion and truth bending

I'm in love with my self-centered,

self-appointed, self-directed, god of self

who cannot know God, does not 

seek God and supresses the truth 

in unrighteousness.

Thanks be to God our Father

who in his mercy and by the washing

and renewing of His Holy Spirit

appointed us as sons for adoption

to be conformed to the image of His Son

Jesus Christ, whom he poured out

that we might be Justified. That we 

might be made righteous. Blessed is the man

whom God does not impute his sin to.

I'm not righteous, Christ is righteous and

his rightouesness has been given to me

without anything I could do or could have

done. I cannot repay. I stand in forever

adoration and thankfulness that my 

life is counted righteous, not because

I will it so, but because my Daddy did.

I love you Daddy and I'm very very very very sorry. Please forgive me, Joshy!

 

The gloriousness of this, is He has. He loves me and I love him. I praise him because it seems reasonable service owed only to the person who brought me back to life. He's my Hero, he's my Father, he's my God and I am his child and his portion. Praise be to God always.

The Gospel Is The Good News, But Is It Good News For Everyone?

I had this thought as I was driving home. I wondered at the idea of the intersection in reality that evangelism is required, and the transliteration of the word gospel is "good news", especially in contrast to the wicked. I thought, "is it good news for everyone?".

Is there any possibility that it is in fact good news, even for the wicked?

Perhaps therein lay some of my misgivings about modern day evangelism and how it's conducted. The perishing have no sense or desire for God. How can it be good news for them? Unless we believe that even by living Godly lives, their living experience will improve. It's true, it will. But, it's not good news for them, in the sense that it, it no way saves them. Nor can it, it's purpose in their life is to harden them and reveal their hatred for God in the day of judgement. They are damned.

But then, when we think of the damned and the wicked, we think of Hitler, Manson and Barney....oh, sorry about that last one. That's just me. My Christian experience has proven to me that the wicked are just as much a part of your church as they are out in the world. Today, it costs literally nothing to call yourself a Christian; and with so many definitions of what that means, combined with the unpopular method of "testing the spirits, to see if they be of God" what you are left with is wheat and tares raised up together. Hmmmm, someone said that would happen didn't they....?

It's my position that the Good News is only good news to the sheep. It's never good news to the wicked and the perishing. They hate it, even if the feign appreciation of it; and you can prove that by watching and paying careful attention to how people treat the good news; especially in application. They will omit parts they don't like; gloss over interpretations that don't suit them; deny the Lordship of Christ in their life by their actions and condemn themselves with their own words, unknowingly.

Their foolish hearts are darkened. They are not wise. They think themselves wise, but they are fools and the good news serves only to condemn their wickedness to their lying, foolish faces. We should have nothing to do with such as these, who with tears confess to you that they are saved, but by their actions they deny Him. We should not apologize that they don't understand, or think us arrogant. We should not be ashamed of the gospel. It says what it says. We should fiercely defend the gospel, lest weaker sheep believe that the good news is just a pile of facts about some distant, but cool, hipster who had long hair and called himself "Hey-Soos" and never really experience the good news...which is the Truth, The Life, and The Way. Accept no subsitutes.

 

Difficult Times Will Come

Author - Andy Smith

“Difficult Times will come”

2 Timothy 3:1-7

“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; avoid such men as these. For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to knowledge of the truth. 

Who is this passage talking about? If you are looking for a boogie man to stand up in pulpit and claim that Jesus is Not the Christ, I’m afraid you have missed the point of this passage entirely. I don’t have to go very far to find someone that fits this description, or least used too. I’m talking about me. I look down the list of sins mentioned here and I find myself wincing as it gets farther down the list. In fact I am guilty of all of them. In fact I suggest you look in the mirror of God’s word and see yourself for who you are. My question to you is this. Do you love God with your whole being? Do you Love His Word and I’m not just talking about on Sundays when you find it and wipe a weeks’ worth of dust off it so you can go to church. Do you work out your salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12)? Paul also said in 2 Cor. 13:5 “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you- unless indeed you fail the test”                 This idea must be pretty important for Paul to mention it in two different gospels.  I confess that this was not something I did until after I got saved. See, I was too afraid of the answer. I look at a lot of churches in America and I see a social club! A physical representation of your Facebook account; I used to say things like “I must be a Christian because I love Christians”, and I would tell you “I Loved His Word”, but I didn’t read it. And who wouldn’t like Christians. They are for the most part descent folk. Who dress nice and talk about good morals and even live them out, at least on the outside appearance. Let me bring out another dynamic. Do you Fear God? Proverbs 9:10 “The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” Hebrews 12:29 “ For our God is a consuming fire”. If you read God’s Word, do you only read the good verses? Do you skip over the parts that you don’t like or understand. See, I suggest that we are all much more guilty of breaking the first two commandments. 

Exodus 20:3-6 “You Shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God,” 

If you create a false god in your mind based on incomplete theology, and then you attend a church and worship your created god. You are guilty of this. And so was I.

So what is my point? That if you are going to claim the name of Christian, there are things that should be true in your life. Start by Loving God with your whole heart, soul, mind and strength.  If you love Him you will obey Him. You can’t make Him LORD! He is LORD!

Read His Word, start in Mathew stop when you get to Revelations. And then throw in a few old testament books!  2 Tim 3:16-17 “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”

And start working out your salvation with fear and trembling! Test yourself to see if you are in the faith. Your eternity depends on it.