That's the title and theme of this Oxford University Press book by Michael McClymond and Gerald McDermott, to be released this Spring.My dear child,--The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 16: Letters and Personal Writings (Yale University Press), 578-79
Before you will receive this letter, the matter will doubtless be determined, as to your having the smallpox. You will either be sick with that distemper, or will be past danger of having it. . . . But whether you are sick or well, like to die or like to live, I hope you are earnestly seeking your salvation. . . .That which you met with, in your passage from New York to Newark, which was the occasion of your fever, was indeed a remarkable mine, a dispensation full of instruction, and a very loud call of God to you, to make haste and not to delay in the great business of religion. If you now have that distemper, which you have been threatened with, you are separated from your earthly friends; none of them must come to see you; and if you should die of it, you have already taken a final and everlasting leave of them while you are yet alive, not to have the comfort of their presence and immediate care, and never to see them again in the land of the living. And if you have escaped that distemper, it is by a remarkable providence that you are preserved.
And your having been so exposed to it, must certainly be a loud call of God, not to trust in earthly friends, or anything here below. . . . [T]his providence remarkably teaches you the need of a better friend, and a better parent, than earthly parents are; one who is everywhere present, and all-sufficient; that can't be kept off by infectious distempers; who is able to save from death or to make happy in death; to save from eternal misery and to bestow eternal life.
It is indeed comfortable, when one is in great pain, languishing under sore sickness, to have the presence and kind care of near and dear earthly friends; but this is a very small thing, in comparison of what it is, to have the presence of a heavenly Father and a compassionate and almighty Redeemer. In God's favor is life, and his lovingkindness is better than life.
Whether you are in sickness or health, you infinitely need this.
The way we pray tells us what we genuinely believe. Our prayer life is a more accurate picture of what we genuinely believe about God than our doctrinal statement.Five-point Calvinists who don't pray are actually Pelagians. Claim what we will, if we say airplanes are safe but never fly, it's clear what we actually believe.
Timothy George:There is no place for arrogance or one-upmanship in the Christian life and especially in the Calvinist life. Of all people, Calvinists should know that whatever understanding we have obtained into the mystery of divine grace, we have received it the same way we have received salvation itself--as a sheer gift (1 Cor 4:7). This means that we should be patient and gentle with our brothers and sisters in Christ who are where we once were in our journey toward a fuller understanding.--Timothy George, Amazing Grace: God's Pursuit, Our Response (Crossway, 2011; 2d ed.), 13-14
I once participated in a theological seminar at Cambridge University. One of the speakers had given a paper that was simply terrible, and there had been several brutal exchanges in the discussion that followed. When we retired for tea, several of us were quite upset by what we had heard from this speaker and his unyieldedness in defending what seemed to us a very misguided point of view. One of us turned to Dr. Ronald Wallace, a great Scottish theologian, and asked with some exasperation, 'What shall we say now? What are we going to do?' With great wisdom, Professor Wallace replied, 'Young men, you must pray, "O Lord, open his eyes, that he may see."' At the end of the day, it is not our brilliant arguments, nor our great learnings or quick wit that can bring anyone to believe in the doctrines of grace. It is the Lord who must open all of our eyes.
Spurgeon:Cast the burden of the present, along with the sin of the past and the fear of the future, upon the Lord, who forsaketh not his saints. Live by the day--aye, by the hour. Put no trust in frames and feelings. Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement. Trust in God alone, and lean not on the needs of human help. Be not surprised when friends fail you: it is a failing world. Never count upon immutability in man: inconstancy you may reckon upon without fear of disappointment.--Lectures to My Students, 164
C. S. Lewis:No sooner do we believe that God loves us than there is an impulse to believe that He does so, not because He is Love, but because we are intrinsically loveable. The Pagans obeyed this impulse unabashed; a good man was 'dear to the gods' because he was good.--The Four Loves, 180; emphasis original
We, being better taught, resort to subterfuge. Far be it from us to think we have virtues for which God could love us. But then, how magnificently we have repented! . . . We next offer our own humility to God's admiration. Surely He'll like that! Or if not that, our clear-sighted and humble recognition that we still lack humility.
Thus, depth beneath depth and subtlety within subtlety, there remains some lingering idea of our own, our very own, attractiveness. It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realise for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us. Surely we must have a little--however little--native luminosity?
His cross is the sweet burden that ever I bare: it is such a burden as wings are to a bird, and sails are to a ship, to carry me forward to my harbour.HT: Gavin Ortlund
'. . . a strangely relaxed kind of strenuousness . . .'