John Newton’s final recorded words: “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior.
Our owning of personal weakness is one of the results of the active presence of grace. And our weakness is how we broadcast the grace of God to others.
Though I cannot see why my life has unfolded in the way it has, God is in control and I am upheld by grace.“-The Happy Calvinist.
Desirable and precious as sanctification is, it is not, I trust it will never be, the ground of my hope. Nor, were I as sinless as an angel in glory, could I have a better ground of hope than I have at present. For acceptance, I rely simply, wholly, and solely, upon the obedience unto death of my surety. Jesus is my righteousness, my life, and my salvation.
If God’s people are bored with God, they are really bad images. God is not unhappy about himself. He is infinitely excited about his own glory.
Regardless of how many books we read, we cling to the old rugged cross. When books overwhelm us, and our intellectual limitations discourage us, we recall the gospel. In the good news of Jesus Christ, overwhelmed readers find peace, and joy, and the courage to keep reading.
In one letter early in his pastorate he wrote, “Though our sins have been deep-dyed, like scarlet and crimson, enormous as mountains, and countless as the sands, the sum total is, but, Sin has abounded; but where sin hath abounded, grace has much more abounded.”4.
Jesus is always near, about our path by day, and our bed by night; nearer than the light by which we see, or the air we breathe; nearer than we are to ourselves; so that not a thought, a sigh, or a tear, escaped his notice.
The more distracted we are digitally, the more displaced we become spiritually.
Scripture is the ultimate grid by which we read every book. Scripture is perfect, sufficient, and eternal. All other books, to some degree, are imperfect, deficient, and temporary. That means that when we pick books from the bookstore shelves, we read those imperfect books in light of the perfect Book, the deficient books in light of the sufficient Book, and the temporary books in light of the eternal Book.
To not feel the sting of sin is a form of sickness, a deadness, a leprosy of the soul.54 But to feel the sting of sin is a mark of health, a sign of life, and a necessary experience if we are to appreciate the sin-conquering work of Christ.
The job of the sin-sick Christian is to repent and turn from sin and press into Christ for continued healing.
But if people see us bored with God, absorbed with ourselves, and conformed to worldly celebrities, they will not see the image of Jesus reflected in.
Habits unnecessary to our calling. A hamster wheel of what will never satisfy our souls. Lewis’s warning about the “dreary flickering” in front of our eyes is a loud prophetic alarm to the digital age. We are always busy, but always distracted – diabolically lured away from what is truly essential and truly gratifying. Led by our unchecked digital appetites, we manage to transgress both commands that promise to bring focus to our lives. We fail to enjoy God. We fail to love our neighbor.
By God’s grace, I can resist the temptation to treat my children as interruptions to my will for my life. Instead, God enables me to treat my children as precious gifts he is using to shape me into his image according to his will for my life.
Through Christ, God offers us grace in our mothering. He takes our meager efforts and produces spiritual fruit in us and in our children. He is enough.
When we look back at God’s past faithfulness to us, it gives us confidence and hope in his future faithfulness.
Facebook becomes a safe and sanitized room where I can watch the ups and downs of others as an anonymous spectator, with no compulsive impulse to respond and care in any meaningful way.
The Christian’s challenge is to love not in tweets and texts only, but even more in deeds and physical presence.
Remembering is a key verb of the Christian life. We recall our past, we correct our nearsightedness, we take heart, we regain mental strength, awe find peace in the eternal Word. Remembering is one of the key spiritual disciplines we must guard with vigilance amid the mind-fragmenting and past-forgetting temptations of the digital age.
We tend to forget about tomorrow and eternity when our days are filled with the tyranny of the urgent.