Your Immediate and Endless Happiness

“Come now, and let us reason together.”

The Lord himself invites you to a conference concerning your immediate and endless happiness, and He would not have done this if He did not mean well toward you.

Do not refuse the Lord Jesus who knocks at your door; for He knocks with a hand which was nailed to the tree for such as you are. Since His only and sole object is your good, incline your ear and come to Him. Hearken diligently, and let the good word sink into your soul.

Why not?

--Charles Spurgeon, All of Grace, p. 24

What if I Make a Wrong Major Life Decision?

Winston Smith, at CCEF. Love these guys. Sane, gospel-rich wisdom.

Don't Seek Repentance: Seek Christ

In April 1983 Jack Miller wrote to a young woman, responding to her concerns as to whether she is truly repentant, a real Christian. Here is the opening to Jack's letter.

Dear Elise,

Thank you for your recent letter concerning your desire to know whether you have had a God-centered repentance. So set aside any fears that I might be unwilling to take time to help you. Perhaps I can help you if you will recognize that all I can do is be a small finger pointing to a large Christ. But if you trust yourself to Him be confident He is not only willing to help you but has the power to help you.

What do you need to know? . . . When you turn to Christ, you don't have a repentance apart from Christ, you just have Christ. Therefore don't seek repentance or faith as such but seek Christ. When you have Christ you have repentance and faith. Beware of seeking an experience of repentance; just seek an experience of Christ.

The Devil can be pretty tricky. He doesn't mind you thinking much about repentance and faith if you do not think about Jesus Christ. . . . Seek Christ, and relate to Christ as a loving Savior and Lord who wants to invite you to know him.

--The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller (P&R, 2004), 244-45

Wright on Mark's Gospel

Good stuff.



HT: Chris Gensheer

Asks No More

Let us wonder, grace and justice
Join and point to mercy's store;
When through grace in Christ our trust is
Justice smiles and asks no more.

--John Newton, 'Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder'

Water into Wine

In John 2 Jesus, having declared that his hour 'has not yet come' (v. 4), turns water into wine at a wedding uniting a bride and a bridegroom; a celebration, a feast.

In John 3 Jesus calls himself the bridegroom (3:29).

Conclusion: John 2 is an anticipation of the real wedding, the true celebration, the ultimate feast. That's why Jesus told his mom, 'My time has not yet come.' His own wedding was yet to come. (see further D. A. Carson, p. 179 of this book)

As Edmund Clowney once put it, reflecting on Jesus' presence at the Cana wedding:

Jesus sat amid all the joy sipping the coming sorrow, so that you and I today can sit amid all this world's sorrow, sipping the coming joy.

Lothlorien

Here is what Tolkien writes of Lothlorien as the company enters this wooded elf land that has escaped the diseased fallenness of the rest of Middle Earth.

The others cast themselves down upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder.

It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no color but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful.

In winter here no heart could mourn for summer or spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lorien there was no stain.

--J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter VI

Only Two Options

Fisher:

If you desire to be justified before God, you must either bring to him a perfect righteousness of your own, and wholly renounce Christ; or else you must bring the perfect righteousness of Christ, and wholly renounce your own.

Edward Fisher, The Marrow of Modern Divinity (Christian Focus, 2009), 111

Forget Forever

"What fountain's that?"

"It is up there in the mountains," said the Spirit. "Very cold and clear, between two green hills. A little like Lethe. When you have drunk of it you forget forever all proprietorship in your own works. You enjoy them just as if they were someone else's: without pride and without modesty."

--C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, ch. 9

Colin Smith: Two Houses