Go Away!

In case anyone has stumbled onto this site I don’t actually blog here!

I use Blogspot cos its easier.

Go to www.fotidzo.blogspot.com!

Many thanks!

The Love Of Christ’s Sake – M’Cheyne On Sanctification

Thrice blessed be God. He has invented a way more powerful than hell and all its terrors; [for our sanctification] an argument mightier far than even a sight of these torments; He has invented a way of drawing us to holiness. By showing us the love of His Son, He calls forth our love. He knew our frame; He remembered that we were dust; He knew all the pecularities of our treacherous hearts; and, therefore, He suited His way of sanctifying to the creature to be sanctified.

Thus the Spirit does not make us of terror to sanctify us, but of love; “the love of Christ constrains us”. … Do you think that He would set about obtaining the obedience of of His children without first of all gaining their affections?

To gain our affections, which by nature rove over the face of the world and centre anywhere but in Him, God has sent His Son into the world to bear the curse of our sins. “Though He was rich for our sakes He become poor, that we, through His poverty, might be made rich”

[and he who gazes at the cross will] be like that poor woman who was a sinner, who stood at Christ’s feet behind Him weeping, and began to wash His feet with tears and did wipe them with her hair, kissing His feet and anointing them with ointment.

Forgiven much, you will love much. Loving much, you will live to the service of Him whom you love. This is the secret spring of all the holiness of the saints. [Christians]

Robert Murray M’Cheyne, The Love Of Christ

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Fight The Good Fight Of Faith

The Christian’s fight is a good fight, because fought with the best of issues and results. No doubt it is a war in which there an; tremendous struggles, agonizing conflicts, wounds, bruises, watchings, fastings, and fatigue. But still every believer, without exception, is “more than conqueror through Him that loved him.” (Rom 8: 37)
No soldiers of Christ are ever lost, missing, or left dead on the battlefield. No mourning will ever need to be put on, and no tears to be shed for either private or officer in the army of Christ. The muster roll, when the last evening comes, will be found precisely the same that it was in the morning.

J C Ryle on the Christian life as a fight.

(It’s a good chapter. Read it! Mark Driscoll teaches with a similar metaphor here)

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Resolved

5. Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.

6. Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.

7. Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.

8. Resolved, to act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings as others; and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God.

12. Resolved, if I take delight in it as a gratification of pride, or vanity, or on any such account, immediately to throw it by.

22. Resolved, to endeavor to obtain for myself as much happiness, in the other world, as I possibly can, with all the power, might, vigor, and vehemence, yea violence, I am capable of, or can bring myself to exert, in any way that can be thought of.

25. Resolved, to examine carefully, and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt of the love of God; and to direct all my forces against it.

67. Resolved, after afflictions, to inquire, what I am the better for them, what good I have got by them, and what I might have got by them.

Jonathan Edwards, various resolutions of his seventy resolutions.

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Future In Whose Hands?

This sign is fundamentally wrong. It should read “Go out and vote. Don’t worry, the future is in God’s hands”.

Whilst this may attract me a huge storm of political comments for me the elections are theological, at least in part. Neither candidate shines from what I have seen. The issue of abortion should certainly be a big factor for Christians, of which Justin Taylor has more.

To return to the picture. Yes, Christians should vote. Any government is better than no government. But they should vote prayerfully and they should rejoice that King Jesus governs everything and everyone. Man plots and schemes but the will of the Lord will stand.

“The king‘s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He will. ” Proverbs 21: 1

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God Saves Sinners

As the regular readers will have guessed this blog is written from a theologically reformed perspective. What this means is that this blog is written to glorify God and to make much of the truth that from beginning to end, in every single detail, without no caveats the Bible is right in saying “Salvation belongs to the Lord” (Jon 2: 9). God the Father planned it, God the Son accomplished it, God the Holy Spirit applied it.

J I Packer sums it up thus

“God saves sinners—and the force of this confession may not be weakened by disrupting the unity of the work of the Trinity, or by dividing the achievement of salvation between God and man and making the decisive part man’s own, or by soft-pedaling the sinner’s inability so as to allow him to share the praise of his salvation with his Saviour. This is the one point of Calvinistic soteriology [theology of salvation] which the “five points” are concerned to establish and Arminianism in all its forms to deny: namely, that sinners do not save themselves in any sense at all, but that salvation, first and last, whole and entire, past, present and future, is of the Lord, to whom be glory for ever; amen.”

J. I. Packer, “Introductory Essay” to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ

To the extent that we immerse ourselves in such a view of our mighty Saviour and King, to that extent will we be lost in wonder and praise, obedience, gratitude, trust, joy, hope, and humble worship.

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All My Shame

“For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” “
Romans 10: 11

I recently wrote a letter to a dear friend and mused on the subject of shame, and since then I have found myself coming back to what I wrote and thinking it over again.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”- so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. (Gal 3: 14-15) To me that and many other Scriptures make it abundantly clear, in Christ I need fear God’s wrath against me no more. Jesus has borne my share. Yet deep down as I imagine standing – kneeling? – before King Jesus I know the feeling of Adam and Eve – I want something to clothe me as I feel ashamed.

When I stand before the Lamb and He calls me to account for how I have lived my life I don’t know how I will feel. Romans 10: 11 and other verses like it ( – eg. 1 John 2: 28) is abundantly precious to me. Because my sin is grotesque, and my good deeds are as bloody rags before Him. He gave me the Gospel – God – and I have been more like the miserable servant than anything else. I bury the gift in the ground.

But our Father is so gracious to us. Even as the Lamb shall be my Judge, so shall the justifying blood of the Lamb keep me from shame and sorrow. I will finally see my white robe washed in the blood of the Lamb. And I will overflow with joy.

It will take a colossal work of Christ to make me joyful when I stand before the King. He is holy, holy, holy. He is light, in Him there is no darkness. I am a sinner. Yet that work has been done on the cross already. And for now the Almighty has given me a beautiful promise:

“Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.” Jude 1: 24-25

Till then by His grace I sing

“All my shame,
All i’ve failed to be
is nailed to a cross
and left at Calvary”

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A Better Hope

He can make the dry parched ground of my soul to become a pool, and my thirsty, barren heart as springs of water; yea he can make this habitation of dragons, this heart so full of abominable lusts and fiery temptations to be a place for grass and fruit for Himself.

(Isaiah 35: 7)

John Owen, Mortification Of Sin

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How Could God Do This To Us

Thursday in Minneapolis it was so gorgeous walking home I thought: I should write a post on how astonishing it is that no earthquake swallowed up this city today.

Instead God sent warmth and crystal skies and cool breezes and golden leaves and hanging sea gulls over Elliot Park.

Amazing. Absolutely amazing!

We deserved the 52-story IDS tower to fall, and bridges to collapse, and poisonous gas to kill thousands. But instead God gave us over-the-top foretastes of heaven.

This is why everyone is crying out, Where was God on Thursday! Where were you God! How could you do this? Why did you let this happen?

Everybody is saying that, aren’t they?

(John Piper)

Ht. DesiringGod blog

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Two Greats On Eternal Joy

All their [the Narnian equivalent of Christians] life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

C. S Lewis, The Last Battle

Same concept in older language:

“I suppose it will not be denied by any, that God, in glorifying the saints in heaven with eternal felicity, aims to satisfy his infinite grace or benevolence, by the bestowment of a good [which is] infinitely valuable, because eternal: and yet there never will come the moment, when it can be said, that now this infinitely valuable good has been actually bestowed.

…

[Our joy will] rise higher and higher through that infinite duration, and . . . not with constantly diminishing (but perhaps an increasing) [velocity] . . . [to an] infinite height; though there never will be any particular time when it can be said already to have come to such a height”

(Jonathan Edwards, The End For Which God Created The World)

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