I can’t understand or know the details of my greatest good. I am very small, and all of creation and time is too much for me to comprehend. Yet I still try to understand it all. I am tempted to ask endless strings of unanswerable why’s. I suppose they are not unanswerable, only the answers are incomprehensible in my little mind.

Demanding to know what I want to know when I want to know it is incredibly arrogant, and it is an attempt to put God, the creator of the universe and author of all life (including mine) under my feet. It is the creation demanding the submission of its Creator. While there are many things I do not know, there are two things I do know which make all the why’s insignificant.

1) God is good and I am not. God is infinitely righteous and holy, and I see my own wickedness in contrast. I am bad to my core. I see it clearly in my gut reactions.

2) I belong to God. Though I have become worthless, God didn’t simply overlook my sins; He has already punished Christ instead of me. My sins were not overlooked; they have already been paid for. And I have not only been adopted, but I have been born into God’s family. I now belong to God forever.

God is good; I am not. And by His grace, I am in His gentle and unyieldingly persistent hands.

So what is God’s greatest good for me? He wants to bear His image in me. It is restoration to my original purpose which I have ignored and rebelled against my whole life. Living for the creator of life is true living even if my body dies in pursuit of Him. It is that I will be turned from chasing death and chase after life no matter how painful it seems at the time.

My greatest good is not to be pain free and comfortable, or disease free and healthy, or to have all the money I need, or all the food I need; my greatest good is to learn the sufficiency of God’s grace and for my heart and soul to cling to the eternal Giver of Life.

If God is good, and I belong to Him, then I can trust that He is after my greatest good. Sometimes this comes through pain and other times through pleasure. And many times the pain seems disproportionate, so I find myself thinking that God is cruel. Of course, that is only because I don’t understand my sinfulness or the extent to which I chase after death daily, hourly, or even minute by minute, and I don’t understand how much my gracious, loving Father does not want that for His children.

For His children, God’s grace, because of Christ, is found everywhere: in pain and pleasure, friendship and loneliness, and wealth and poverty. God loves His children very much and has promised from before the beginning of time to conform them to the image of His Son.

One day, things will be restored and perfected. None of this is in vain. God works all things together for the good of His children. Do not waste your pain on hopelessness and fear, but use it to cultivate hope and faith. God actively cares for you minute by minute and by His grace gives you all you need for every moment to become a lover of Him, and He gently and persistently steers us away from death toward life.

I went to the doctor (got a tetanus shot), they called animal control, and I found out that the same dog had bitten two other people that morning. The dog’s now in quarantine to make sure he doesn’t have rabies (he probably doesn’t). I took a couple of days off from running, and I’m still a little sore today, but I will be doing my 20 mile run this Sunday.

Honestly, I didn’t think much of it. Dog’s bite sometimes, but pitbulls are actually pretty dangerous. In 2010, there were 33 fatal dog attacks, and even though only 5% of dogs in the US are pitbulls, 67% of these deaths were caused by pitbulls. Of course, that doesn’t include other maulings, bites, and attacks.

Dog attack!

8.5 miles / 13.679424 km
Created 10.10.11 by mymind1086

I read this hymn this morning, and it reminded me that I have been redeemed. Because of God’s great love and God pouring out his wrath on Christ instead of me, I have been called to God and adopted as his son. Not only have I been adopted, but I have been reborn into His family! No longer am I subject to God’s wrathful anger, but I am disciplined as a loving father disciplines his son. He is making me holy because he saw me in my blind sin and loved me and had compassion on me. He saw that I needed forgiveness and life, and He gave it to me because He loves me.

Hear what he has done for my soul!

-John Newton

I start with my apartment, then move to Wake Forest, and end with my campus.

My door.

My living room.

I don’t have a couch because I’m really rich.

My bedroom.

As you can see, I do launder my bedding unlike a lot of guys.

(the mattress is small, but it sooooo comfortable.)

My kitchen.

My chicken.

(this was my very last art assignment in college.)

My bike.

Downtown Wake Forest.

Weird statue that startles me every time I walk by it.

My school.

(This is the oldest building on campus. it’s the first building in the state of NC where Evolution was taught. of course, that is very ironic considering it now belongs to a very theologically conservative seminary.)

(this is the newest building. I like that it “looks” old.)

Wake Forest Baptist Church.

Even though it is “on campus”, it’s not a technically a part of our campus.

I want to conclude with a comic I drew yesterday. Enjoy.

“I mean, we could eat here if you really want to. But I’m not a big burger person.”

Withstanding Temptation

There is no such thing as “the last little bit”.

There is no dichotomy between parts of our lives where we need God and parts of our lives where we can depend on ourselves. It isn’t right to say that I depend on myself to make most of my rent and on God for the last little bit. It isn’t right to say that I can provide most of what I need for myself and then put the last little bit in God’s hands. And that last little bit God provides should not be waited for in anxiety with gritted teeth and crossed fingers. I think sometimes we also feel it is our faith that will get us through that last little bit. If we have enough faith, then we will enable God to provide.

This thinking is wrong and replaces God, in our hearts, with self. Thankfully, God has so much grace and compassion that He continues to meet our needs despite the fact that we believe we are the ones meeting our own needs.

The truth is, every single thing we have in life is because of God’s provision. Sometimes I feel proud when I feel I have trusted God to take care of the last little bit. But this really only reveals a complete lack of trust and understanding in God’s provision. I trust in myself to meet most of my needs and then only half-heartedly trust God to meet the last little bit.

In reality, it is only because of God’s grace that I can work and make money. It is only by God’s grace I have friends and family. It is only by His grace that I move and breathe and live and work and play. It is only by His grace that I am justified and no longer have to worry.

All I have is from God.

I think the first step in withstanding temptation is to admit complete, total dependence on God and His grace to provide us with all we need. We have to do away with the idea of self-reliance in any part of our lives. God created me and gave me life and my sustenance is in His hands. I do not have the power to sustain my life anymore than I have the power to create myself.

I also do not have the power to save my soul or justify my soul. My salvation is a gift from God by His grace. It is He who saves me and sustains my soul. It is God who causes my heart to love holiness and find my deepest joy in Him. Without Him, I am only evil through and through. So, I acknowledge that it is God who sustains me in every way, even in my striving.

The idea of withstanding temptation makes more sense when we acknowledge that all we have is from God and that all self-reliance is only delusional thinking.

Grace is free.

In A Godward Life, John Piper says, “Gratitude is a joyful emotion for worship but a dangerous motive for obedience.” He has 3 reasons for this: 1) It is impossible to pay God back for His grace; 2) If we succeeded in paying Him back, it wouldn’t be grace; and 3) focusing on gratitude as an empowerment for obedience tends to overlook the crucial importance of future grace.

The problem with gratitude as an empowerment for obedience is that it nullifies in our hearts the very thing we are grateful for. We are thankful for grace and then try to pay God back for a free gift. Do we truly believe it is free?

God has promised to make you pure and holy.

It’s not that we are justified by the grace of God, and then we have to rely on ourselves for our sanctification or growth in holiness. Every part of our salvation from justification to sanctification is a gracious and miraculous act of God where He Justifies a sinner calling him righteous and holy and then works in him to cause the sinner’s heart to cling to Him for eternity and works in him patiently and lovingly to do good works through him.

God did not save you to sit back and impatiently watch you fumble around in sin. He didn’t save you because He was obligated to and now He has to deal with you because you are His. He saved you because he loves you and wants to pry your heart from death and cause your heart to cling to what it was meant to cling. We find life when our hearts do what they were meant to do: glorify God.

God will not grow tired of you. He knew you better than you will ever know yourself when He first made your heart and soul come alive to His grace and immeasurable love.

When we understand that our souls are in the hands of a very good God and that He has promised to give us the grace to move us from sinfulness to holiness, we can have faith in God’s future grace.

Rely on His grace for obedience.

When I believe that God has promised to make me holy and will continue to sanctify me, I can go before Him daily and receive endless, life-giving riches. He gives me peace, contentment and joy which lead to holiness and love that should overflow to the people around me.

Withstanding temptation comes from a heart change that we are completely dependent on God for. There is no formula or willpower strong enough to change our hearts. We simply come to Jesus Christ and drink living water and take all the riches He graciously blesses us with.

Obedience comes from a faith that God is making us holy day by day and making us a little more willing every day to repent and entrust our hearts, souls and lives to Him.

Jesus is not a mean to an end. He does not promise worldly success or worldly pleasure or worldly peace or worldly security as if He is the glue to adhere us to the world. He is not a step between where we are now and where we want to be.

Jesus is the Eternal. He is everything and He is the ultimate Good and Light and Truth. He is Reality. He is not merely a part of our existence who helps us along our way. He is the reason we exist and because of His grace we know He is the reason we exist.

Jesus is King and Lord. He is sovereign whether we like it or not, and our worlds and lives should be viewed through such a lens.

Jesus didn’t die so our own delusional kingship of our lives would be strengthened as if He were only one of our servants. He didn’t die to tie our hearts to the world by always granting us success and happy endings. He died so that, by the grace of God, we would have a heart that yearns for the world to be put back in its proper order, a heart that yearns for Christ to be its king, and a heart that longs to obey the One it was created to obey. He died so that there would be immeasurable grace when we as little children imperfectly love our Father and often fail to love Him.

His death brings life and restoration, hope and peace. Because of new life, I can see restoration happening. Because of what God has done, my hope and peace in future, continued restoration is secure. Now I can faithfully step out in obedience knowing God has not forgotten me or you or the world.

My thorns should pinch me awake so I don’t fall asleep and think I will find lasting peace in a fallen world. I am not in heaven yet. They should remind me that I still desperately need the Gospel, and my life would be entirely, completely, and totally different without the love of Christ.

Christ died for me while I was still a sinner with an act of pure love, so I could be declared and made righteous. I have been taken out of, and preserved from a life of blindness and slavery. I am now a friend and child of God, and when I look at all He has done, I wonder why I’ve ever doubted His goodness.

My thorns are only a reminder of what was beaten and that death is dying and life is growing, and I have evidence of this unshakeable truth in my very own life history.

I will not forget this truth because my entire life has been sealed in Christ and not only forgiven but changed and molded from death to life. I will step into the future in joyful faith without fear because my God, Jesus Christ, has overcome the world, and He has overcome death.

With the Gospel, there is no room for despair and no room for fear, only joyful steps of faith that lead us to a passionate love for God and the people He created.

-Thoughts from my journal from 1/28/2011